210 Stephan van Vliet – The first randomised clinical trial comparing agro-ecological grown and supermarket food

A conversation with Stephan van Vliet, assistant professor of nutrition studies at the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University, about nutrient density food, human health and the world’s first randomized clinical trial of 14 weeks comparing a whole diet of supermarket food vs food grown using agro-ecological and regenerative practices.

This episode is part of the Nutrient Density in Food series!
This series is supported by the A Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically and socially conscious. They contribute to the wider movement that envisions a future where real food is produced by enlightened agriculture and access to it is equal. The A Team are looking to make more investments and grants in the space of bionutrients. You can find out more on ateamfoundation.org.

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Stephan van Vliet is one of the leaders in the scientific world when it comes to measuring nutrient density and connecting that to soil health and importantly human health.

More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/stephan-van-vliet.

Find our video course on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course.

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The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Chapters

• 1:45 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 6:35 Why is there so little research healthy soils healthy humans?
• 10:40 Randomised clinical trial 14 weeks
• 19:14 The regen beef study
• 28:30 How have you changed your diet in the last years?
• 35:15 What about alternative proteins and cellular meat?
• 53:17 What should smart investors, who want to invest in reg ag and food look out for?
• 59:00 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 1:00:48 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing in agriculture and food what would it be?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

talking to one of the leaders in the scientific world when it comes to measuring nutrient density and connecting that to soil health and importantly human health. He's even running the world's first randomized control clinical trial of 14 weeks comparing a whole diet of supermarket food versus a whole diet of food grown using the full suite of agroecological and regen practices. What are the connections between healthy farming practices, healthy soil, healthy produce, healthy gut and healthy people? Welcome to a special series where we go deep into the relationship between regenerative agriculture practices that build soil health and the nutritional quality of the food we end up eating. We unpack the current state of science, the role of investments, businesses, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, and more. This series is supported by the A-Team Foundation, who support food and land projects that are ecologically, economically, and socially conscious. They contribute to a wider movement that envisions a future where real food is produced by enlightened agriculture and access to it is equal. The A-Team Foundation are looking to make more investments and grants in the space of bionutrients. You can find more here, a-teamfoundation.org or get in touch directly, info at a-teamfoundation.org or check the information in the show notes below. Welcome to another episode, today with the Assistant Professor of Nutrition Studies at the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University. Welcome, Stefan.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 1:36

And to start with that personal question, we always like to start with how did you end up, first of all, because you're Dutch, in Utah, but also on focusing on nutrient density so deeply and the connection to soil health and running probably a few of the most progressive studies in this field. Like what was the journey that led you towards soil is always a question I like to ask at the beginning.

SPEAKER_01: 2:00

Yeah, my quest started, well, just to back up a little bit, I grew up in the Netherlands but it's in our blood that the Dutch, we always want to leave the Netherlands for some reason, even though it's a pretty nice country. But I grew up close to Rotterdam, which is a major city, but I didn't grow up in the city, but close to farmland. So I always had an interest in farming from early on. I didn't grow up on a farm, but we would have access to farm products, mainly milk and things like that. When I was 18, I didn't know what to do. So I went to business school in the Netherlands, and I got my degree in business, and then I thought, this is not for me. So I made a career switch, and I was getting into exercising, lifting weights at that time, got interested in nutrition. And from there on, first interested in athletic performance, I kind of grew into overall human health. And for a while, I was very interested in the connection between agriculture and human nutrition, and how does the way that we grow our food impacts the nutritional quality of our food and our health. And then when I was at the Duke University School of Medicine, I was really able to pursue that line of work because of the independence that I was given there and started to build up this line of work, working together with farmers, with soil scientists. I don't know a thing about soil, but once we get the plant biochemistry and animal health and human nutrition, I start to have an idea of what's going on. And so I started to that and that's what I'm doing here now at Utah State University which is really nice because I'm in a clinical research facility but it's within an ag school so there's a lot of support for this type of work.

SPEAKER_00: 3:47

And just to back up one second how because that connection to healthy soil and what ends up in food is something that seems super logical after you of course spent quite a bit of time in it and after you've seen it let's say quote unquote you cannot unsee it like of course we have to ask what's in a broccoli of course we have to ask what's in our animal protein or how that's been grown but for many let's say that's not a very natural thing to say because most diets we see most advice is still very much eat more plants or eat more broccoli or eat less this instead of looking at how it has actually been grown how did that I would say click with you or was it just always super logical and make so much sense or do you remember that because it didn't grow up on a farm that the soil piece came into play strongly like unless we focus on that we cannot really know what ends up on our plate?

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

Well, the soil piece came in later, I think. Initially, what sort of made the click for me was looking more at how we raise animals, right? If an animal is outside and eating forages and has plenty of ability to move, we kind of intuitively think that produces a, creates a healthier animal than when an animal is inside, right, with limited ability to move. And maybe not fat, the the diet that it would otherwise normally seek out, which would be forages instead of a lot of grains. So that's where it kind of clicked with me. I was like, hmm, what's that connection between a healthier animal and a healthier food or the nutritional composition? That kind of clicked on at an early age and, you know, I would go to the farmer to buy grass-fed milk directly from the farmer and, you know, you could taste the fresh grasses in it. So that's made that click. At that point, I wasn't really thinking about the soil. This was also when I was like 16 or 17 or something like that. So then later on, I started to make the connection because, well, how does a plant obtain its nutrients and why are, you know, grasses lush and is there a diversity of nutrients within plants? Well, the plants is to get the nutrients from someplace, which being the soil and the relationship between the plant and the soil and even ruminants is very much a symbiotic one, right? Of course, the plant obtains nutrients from the soil, but also puts nutrients back into the soil and the same with the animal. So that click probably came like five years ago or so when I really started to navigate my research into this direction because it was something I heard from farmers all the time. They always doubt the relationship, healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy humans. And while that maybe intuitively makes sense, there isn't a whole lot of research into that to actually make that connection.

SPEAKER_00: 6:34

And why is that? If it makes so much sense and farmers keep repeating that, like you are what you eat, you are what your food ate, I mean, great title of book. And I will link the interview below, but that we've been saying that in some cases for centuries and somehow the research doesn't seem to be there or it's been very, very limited so far to really connect the soil all the way to our plate or all the way to our blood and to our stomachs and digestive system. Why is it difficult to do it or it just hasn't been... of attention of the scientific community.

SPEAKER_01: 7:09

Yeah, in the scientific community, we're very good at creating specialists and not as much generalists, right? As academics, we like to stay in our own little bubble, in our own little small field and study one thing. And that has historically been the case. So you have human nutrition scientists that study human nutrition, but do we ever talk to farmers? Do we ever walk in to our colleagues across the street that are in animal science, that are in plant sciences? No, that almost never happens. And I think that is shifting a little bit where there's a big interest in this type of systems work where people sort of come down of their ivory towers and start working together because we are working on the same thing, right? Me as a human nutrition scientist, I'm interested in healthy humans. Well, how is that achieved? By, first of all, the way that we grow our food, starting all the way at the soil. So I think historically we've taken a reductionistic approach to this and we still do in many cases but there are some scientists now and it's becoming increasing interest also with federal funding to take a more holistic approach and try to link some of these fields together

SPEAKER_00: 8:24

And so we're talking to the end of 2022. Where would you describe where we are now? Like, what do we know? And what don't we know? And what are like the unknown unknowns of which, of course, are impossible to know? But where would you describe the field is in general in terms of linking that healthy soil piece to healthy humans?

SPEAKER_01: 8:45

That field is in its infancy, right after birth, maybe, I think. So the baby was just born. That's kind of the state that we're because I think there have been some studies to suggest, I think one by David Montgomery, John Lundgren, some of our work, that starts to make these initial connections between the way that the nutrients found in the soil, the minerals found in the soil, and the nutrients that are found in the food. The connection with human nutrition or human health, to my knowledge, has not been made. We're doing one of the first studies where we're actually comparing food that was grown using regenerative of agroecological principles. I like to use the term agroecology. It's regenerative agriculture. If someone knows what it means, please tell me because it seems like there's no consensus on that.

SPEAKER_00: 9:40

Agroecology seems more well-defined, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:44

Yeah, it's more well-defined. It can mean multiple things, integrated crop livestock, multi-cropping, lay rotations. It's... it's basically anything but a monoculture really in many cases, sort of nature-based solutions to farming. So we're doing a study now where we're looking at that seven weeks of consuming foods from agroecological farming systems versus your conventional non-organic farming systems. So that will be one of the first to make the connection between human health. But yeah, you know, when we look at the healthy soils, healthy plants, healthy animals, peace, or even healthy foods, that connection, is a lot easier to make. Once you get to the human piece, it becomes incredibly challenging because we're so diverse in our diets, in our lifestyles, compared to maybe other animals, right? So that part becomes the most challenging part.

SPEAKER_00: 10:40

And so how are you approaching that study, the randomized control, actually, and it's seven weeks in seven weeks? How do you approach that to make sure there is the scientific rigor to it? And of course, people don't figure out that they are on the seven-week or of non-agriculture food, let's say. How do you approach a study like that if you want to show that connection that, okay, this food grown with these practices that we know is much fuller with certain nutrients and a lot of things we need, but then we would love to show or we'd like to see the connection with human health. How do you even approach something like that?

SPEAKER_01: 11:14

Well, we source all of our foods from regenerative farms for the agroecological diet and for the conventional produce is just bought in the store, non-organic produce. To keep it applied, that's what someone would normally get, right, at the moment in most grocery stores. We'll see if that changes in several decades, but that's how we do it. And so the way that we control it is that we provide people with all of their food. So every piece of food that they eat for 40 weeks, seven weeks on each diet, we get. So it might be a conventional onion versus an agroecologically grown onion the participant cannot tell the difference but you know or at least officially we hope not um so we provide them with all their foods and and people uh make them at home according to their liking but in both diets we ask people to prepare these foods in a similar way so that way it's it's it's applied um you sometimes get into a risk if you make all the food already pre-prepared some people like oh i don't like this meal that's uh that is prepared this way so we give give people the freedom to do it, but they are in control of each other. So that's nice because each participant follows each diet twice. And we provide them with every single food that we give them. The participant is blinded to it, so they don't know what they're getting at the end. We let them guess what they ate, and we have a bunch of questionnaires asking, what do you think about the taste, the flavor, how would you feel, and things like that.

SPEAKER_00: 12:50

And so what do we know already? are there any early results like are people able to guess is there so is there a taste difference or color difference or what can you tell us already like I said we're the end of 2022 this will come out probably somewhere I'm guessing next year or after but are there any early slight snippets you can share with us already

SPEAKER_01: 13:15

sure yeah so we take blood urine and stool samples before and after each diet to see the changes so far We've completed 16 people. So we're done for the season. As you can see behind me, there's a lot of snow. So not a lot of growing of produce here at the moment. But we have another batch of participants starting next spring and summer and fall. So that's when we run the study. Probably another 16 to 20 participants. So we'll probably come out in 2024. The interesting part though about this, and I think this is also very important to realize, we study middle-aged individuals with the risk factors for metabolic syndrome. So they either have have elevated blood glucose or HbA1c, their triglycerides might be a bit elevated, their blood pressure. They at least have one risk factor for metabolic syndrome. there's a reason why they have that. And typically that is the consumption of a standard American diet that is habitually consumed, right? So you can imagine if you put people on sort of a agroecological or conventional diet based on whole foods, which is what we're giving them.

SPEAKER_00: 14:21

Already it's much better than their standard, yeah. Because they have to cook from scratch. It's not processed. I wouldn't say anything, but almost anything is better than what they would have been eating normally their 14 weeks.

SPEAKER_01: 14:33

Yeah, so we see some improvements, Erik, Irrespective of the diet at the moment, mainly people lose some weight because there's only so much you can eat when you're eating fresh produce and meat, milk, and eggs. It's hard to overeat. Overall diet quality is very important. I think that's the key part, right? Anything you can do to improve the diet. If people start eating more fruits and vegetables, then yeah, they get healthier. Less ultra processed foods. So we're seeing that people lose weight, probably three kilos or about six to seven pounds during the duration of the study with no difference between groups. And then their triglycerides go down a bit. Their HbA1c might improve a bit. When it becomes really interesting, and we don't have that data yet because we run it all the way at the end, we use a technique that's called metabolomics and it's the study of metabolites. And we look at about three, 400 compounds in people's blood. And these are vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, amino acids, phytochemicals, which are plant antioxidants. That if there's differences, I think that is where we will start to show it because it's, you know, these are vitamin and mineral statuses. That's really, And these changes in the metabolism typically precede any changes that you see in health as well, right? And you can get a little deeper, dig deeper in it because obviously in a 14-week randomized controlled trial, no one develops heart disease. And if we did, we'd be in big trouble probably. So it explains to do with the ethical committee. So we can only measure biomarkers, but by looking at changes in metabolism, vitamin, mineral, composition of the blood then yeah I mean if there are differences then you would expect that over time 10 years 20 years 30 years that should lower your risk of metabolic disease or you have more adequate nutrient status but that's we don't know that yet all we do know is that the foods from that were grown in agroecological ways are more nutrient dense particularly higher in phytochemicals these plant antioxidants And

SPEAKER_00: 16:54

so we're really at the baby phase, let's say, of this sector. What do you see? How many of these studies are being done around the world? Or are you really the only one? Or what do you see when you talk to colleagues? Is there a lot of excitement? Are other people setting up these kind of randomized control trials with full diets? Because, of course, you have to capture everything. You cannot just swap the grains and hope for the best or the animal protein. What do you see among colleagues around these? Okay, let's start. Let's see if we can capture that last or show that last connection to human health. We can get as far as, okay, what's in the food, but then how do we get to the human health part? Is that something that in a year or two we'll have way more or is it still very lonely out there as basically a researcher as you're currently approaching it?

SPEAKER_01: 17:51

Well, I wouldn't say lonely because there is a big interest in this, but it is really a grassroots movement. There is an academic interest in this for sure, with colleagues studying these things. Particularly on the food side of things right now, the food nutrient density or the food compositional profiling, that is something that is really growing with other initiatives as well, where people are starting to look at, hey, how does this farming method impact the food nutritional composition? composition. That link to human health in randomized controlled trials, yeah, that is very much even more so in this agency. And I'm sure there'll be other studies. And I do know of some colleagues that are studying this in more grass-fed, grain-fed beef, or things like that. Less so on the whole diet side. I'm not aware of any studies at the moment that are being done like that, looking at the entire diet. But I'm sure in two to five years' time, more studies like that will be done. And I think it's always so important that we look at the overall diet quality and the diet as a whole. Because, I mean, if I eat a hot dog as part of a standard American diet or as part of a Mediterranean diet, right, my health outcomes are going to probably be and night different.

SPEAKER_00: 19:13

Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned beef for a second. You are involved or leading as well quite a considerable beef study focused on this nutrient density. So not necessarily the human health, but definitely how, let's say, grass management and grazing management translates into quality taste and nutrient density of beef. Can you share a bit more about that work and where it's at now at the end of the year 2022?

SPEAKER_01: 19:41

So it's called the Beef Nutrient Density Project. It's a collaboration with the Bionutrient Institute, also several other funding agencies as well. We have some USDA funding, some funding from Applegate, some funding from Soilworks and other philanthropical organizations. The goal is to raise about a million dollars for it. We're about halfway through or so. To study 250 50 farms across the US and these are beef farms and ranches ranging anywhere from sort of what you would call regenerative rotational grazing to feedlot finished and anything in between really, because grass fed isn't grass fed isn't grass fed either. If you are grazing very biodiverse pastures, you have typically more nutrient dense meat and better soil health outcomes than when you overgraze your pasture We're on a monoculture, right? Historically, especially where I'm at in Western rangelands, the idea is to sort of, okay, the grazing season starts, we let animals out for six months and we just let them graze and we don't do anything in terms of management, right? Like we're not rotationally grazing them. So there's overgrazing.

SPEAKER_00: 21:01

We just collect them at the end of the season and count how many there

SPEAKER_01: 21:04

are, yeah. Yeah, count how many are there. And then we put them back on hay. And I mean, that's not historically... how wild herbivores were, you know, that were grazing through the landscape, always on the move, right? And then on the feedlot side of things, too, is that loose confinement versus tight confinement, right? What if you give an animal three to four times more space in a feedlot and the animal walks around more? You start to see that. It's the same, not any different than a human. If we sit on our butt all day for 10 hours in an office chair, right, and not moving around, it's not good for our metabolic health. For a cow, something similar happens as well. So if they're able to engage in more physical activity, how does that improve things? And also, what if you fed more phytochemically rich products to cattle and feedlot? What if animals are pushed up to 80, 85% grains? And we know corn is not very rich. It's rich in proteins, rich in energy, but it's not very rich in vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals. So the animal grows fast, but maybe not, their meat doesn't become as nutrient dense if you look at these thousands of phytochemical compounds, right? And the vitamins and minerals. But what if we feed more phytochemically rich feed? What if we do, for instance, instead of 20% hay, 80% corn, 50-50, for instance, right? Or what if we give some lemon peels or grape byproducts from the wine industry to the animal? Can we improve things? So we're still We're studying this wide range of practices. And we are trying to figure out sort of what are the best practices in there? Because you do see on farms, right, that have these rotational raising practices, whether it is North Carolina, North Dakota, or South America, what do these farmers have in common that have improved soil health, that have the most nutrient-dense meat? That's what the project is trying to figure out. And the other part is also to characterize that variation among systems. because we are finding that the variation is, I mean, especially the grass-fed beef industry, it's a wild west out there.

SPEAKER_00: 23:22

Yeah, no, you can call anything and almost everything grass-fed, grass-finished. Grass-finished is obviously a bit different, but there's a lot of variation. And how easy is it to find those 250 farms or ranchers that want to participate or how difficult was it? I don't know how far you are with that. Like how far is the study? You said you're about halfway there with funding. It doesn't mean you're halfway there with the study as well, or do those things not, let's say, sync up?

SPEAKER_01: 23:51

They don't always sync up because the funding has to be in place first before you start recruiting more farmers. But yeah, there's no problem in finding farmers, that's for sure. But what we do always have to be careful for is that obviously the farmers that want to participate in that are the ones who are like, okay, we're doing these regenerative practices. I see that my animals are getting healthier. My look better I want to participate because I want some data behind that right so we're getting yeah exactly so we need the other ones as well sometimes you buy off the shelf beef because even the feedlots that we sometimes work with directly I sometimes jokingly call them artisanal feedlots because you know they are definitely amongst the best practices in feedlots in that regard as well but yeah there's no finding farmers is relatively easy because there's so much interest in that and so much enthusiasm from farmers especially farmers that use these agroecological principles such as rotational grazing so we are I think about 70 farms in or so 75 farms in so about a quarter of the way there we did our first big round of analysis with those farms and I mean so far what we found was is is that if we look at the phytochemical richness, and phytochemicals are things like polyphenols, flavonoids, terpenes, and things like that, things that when we talk about antioxidants, we're typically talking about these plant compounds. So they are upcycled from the forages into the meat of the animal. We also measure vitamins and we see compositional changes there too, particularly in vitamin B3 and choline, which come from forages. And what we're finding there so far is that on average, the phytochemicals in grass-fed beef are about two to three times higher than in grain-fed beef, but there's a tenfold variation among samples, meaning that the sort of the best grain-fed beef is still more phytochemically rich than the worst grass-fed beef, but the best grass-fed beef is about seven times higher than the best grain-fed beef. fat beef still. So in the same way as omega-3 to 6 ratios, we see huge variations there too with grass-fed beef. Typically, sort of the Holy Grail is a ratio of 1 to 1, same amount of omega-3s as omega-6s. Feedlot beef, we know, has an omega-6 to 3 ratio of 15 to 1 because grains contain more of the precursors to omega-6s. But even in grass-fed beef systems, we sometimes find an omega-6 to 3 ratio of 15 to 1, where sort of the superstar farmer that use these regenerative principles are down at one-to-one. When I'm looking at 15-to-one, I'm thinking like, hmm, I'm not 100% sure if that's fully grass-fed beef.

SPEAKER_00: 26:54

No, you're pretty sure it's not, yeah. And is that connected, like the one-on-one, the superstar farmers that are on the one-on-one ratio, is that, are they the same that are super high in phytonutrients?

SPEAKER_01: 27:08

Yeah, they're very high in phytonutrients and that's what we're typically finding if, and you know, I visited many of these farms. And of course, you need data behind it, but you can kind of see it with your own eyes too, right? If you're looking at this patch here with grasses up until your waist and there is... you know, 10, 20, 30 plant species out there, flowering plants, and there's just this incredible biodiversity on pasture. Yeah, you do see that that translates into the compounds that you find in the meat. Because the animal has access to this diversity, it can kind of select which plants it needs in which amounts, and even those nibbles on plants like wild onions or clover, things we know, or chock full of phytic chemicals, even if it's just a small nip here and there, probably only makes up like 0.0 something percent of their diet or 0.1% of their diet. We see that it's much like spices that we throw on our foods, right? It's kind of the same with the cow. Yeah. And that makes a big difference. And I was also surprised to find that a little bit goes a long way in creating some of those unique bio with our first plants.

SPEAKER_00: 28:29

And so how have you shifted, if at all, your diet over the last, let's say, five years as soil has come more front and center in your work?

SPEAKER_01: 28:39

So I definitely buy more foods from agroecological farms. I mean, for many years now, I've been, I also like connecting with farmers and just talking to farmers. So I like going to farmers markets for that reason already. Just there's a lot you can learn from a farmer. I mean, you know, we as scientists are always a little bit behind the curve, I think, that regards

SPEAKER_00: 29:04

the farmer. That's what John really pointed out. Yeah, first time we had him on, like, I had to leave the USDA because I had to go and spend time with farmers because that's where the cutting edge pieces were happening. And I just, yeah, couldn't do it from the ivory tower. I needed to start a farm myself because otherwise I wouldn't know. And it's interesting, yeah, the cutting edge is happening, seems to be happening on the land with innovative farmers.

SPEAKER_01: 29:31

Yeah, of course, because the farmer sees that. I mean, their business is dependent on it, right? You have to make sure you've got your ducks in a row and they see, okay, well, if I have more biodiverse plants, if my soil organic matter increases, my pastures contain more grasses and plants and the animals do better and they grow quicker and it has economical benefits, right? And by marketing that, I can also hopefully to get a premium on my product. So their livelihood is dependent on it. So you've got to make sure that you sort of have your stuff together. And then we study that later on, right? And then of course, sometimes we find something interesting that is like unexpected, even to the farmer. But yeah, I mean, I must be realistic. Sometimes I also feel like we're kicking in an open door, right? If I collect plant samples on an overgrazed pasture, and then I step over the fence to the neighbor and he has like these tall grasses with like, this sort of utopia looking pasture, right? And the guy next to that has these grasses that are an inch tall and made. And yeah, not that surprising that we're finding some better findings in the farm that has 10, 20 plants that are blooming. So that is, of course, what we're finding. And I must also admit is that if you sort of start paying attention to more if one of the sort of eye opening things for me always is is that if you go to the farmer's market and you buy a carrot right just a raw carrot sinking your teeth in that it's just chock full of flavor right and you can really it just it just tastes amazing right and the same with like a fresh strawberry or something like that and then you go to the grocery store and you eat a carrot or a strawberry it's it's like water with a slight hint of carrot flavor or with a slight hint of strawberry flavor. And I know part of that is because it's not picked at peak ripeness, but part of that is also because it is probably grown in ways that do not maximize carotenoids in the carrots or do not maximize these flavonols in the polyphenols in the strawberries, which we know are higher when they are grown in more agroecological ways. And so you can definitely taste that.

SPEAKER_00: 31:57

And so if it's so obvious and say the benefits for farmers, of course, the premium depends how you're structured, et cetera. Why is that neighbor of the overgrazed pasture in May not taking more notes from the neighbor with, let's say, quote unquote, a utopian or utopia growing pasture next to him or her? Like what's holding, especially in grass fed as well, because I don't think it's very insured. Like I don't think there's an extreme, let's say like what's holding the ones back that are on the bottom of that omega 3 and 6 ratio but are grass fed or at least on paper to push up and join the front runners

SPEAKER_01: 32:42

yeah that's a good question and to sort of say that utopia I jokingly say that because sometimes I post these pictures on like Twitter or something like that when I visit a farm and then there's always a few people who are like that oh yeah sure that works for like one or two farmers let's get out of here with your, your grass utopia. That's, that's not real. And I'm like, well, see that multiple, you know, we can make it real, I think. But anyway, yeah, The thing, though, is that one of the things, though, is that we are paying farmers for yield and not nutrient density, right? That is one thing already. One telling example is that if you have a blueberry that is five times more rich in polyphenols than blueberry B, right? Let's say you grow a blueberry in agroecological ways, five times more phytochemicals than blueberry grown in conventional ways. When the farmer goes to sell that, you're going to get paid for yield, not for for nutrient density. And even though that other blueberry might be twice as expensive that contains five times more phytochemicals, that's not what you're being paid for. You could eat five times less and get the same amount of phytochemicals. So, but at the moment we're paying for yields. And I think that's also, there's not enough incentive for the farmer to maybe maximize nutrient density. And part of it is also is that, okay, this is oftentimes what I hear is like, this is how we've always done it. And it usually takes some sort of catastrophic thing on the farm. I don't know if you ever talked to Gabe Brown or something who had four eye-opening events where his crops failed, his animals weren't doing well, and then finally he was like, okay, I got to overhaul this entire business

SPEAKER_00: 34:24

from my dad. Three years of hail or something. Yeah, exactly. So

SPEAKER_01: 34:29

usually it takes some sort of event or you get a young farmer as well. Not to say that all the farmers are not willing to change either, but at the moment the incentive isn't there and You know, I mean, There is definitely some incentives going on and we have to always be careful what if you, you know, start paying farmers for carbon credits or improve soil health, it will likely have a trickle down effect. But I mean, we live in a capitalistic society, so there has to be some sort of financial invested incentive to do that. And at the moment, probably there's more incentive in risk aversion because if you, if your animals graze your crops, right, you might not be able to get crop insurance, even though that would be something that's very worthwhile to do.

SPEAKER_00: 35:16

So what is your go-to answer when somebody asks, you know, why are you bothering with all this animal protein research and the phytonutrients and the, we can just grow most of this or all of this in the lab, look at the lab, grow meat revolution, and then, and or actually look at alternative proteins. Like what is your, there's so much hype around that at the moment, billions are putting, are poured into it, seems to be a bit of a cooling down as we've speak as well, but what's your take on that? What's your go-to answer when somebody, I don't know, when you do speech somewhere, raises their hand and says, why bother with these animal proteins? Soon they won't be necessary anymore.

SPEAKER_01: 35:54

Well, I think it doesn't have to be either or, right? I'm open to any ways that we can explore to improve the sustainability of our food system that could include alternative proteins or cellular ag, but I also don't see us sort of stop growing our foods in fields anytime soon either. So it doesn't have to be an either or thing. I mean, scaling up cellular ag now, which has to comply with pharmaceutical standards, right, grown in a lab. I mean, that's going to take some time to scale up. Another thing, though, is also that we have to be aware of is that we barely understand the nutritional complexity of whole foods that are grown in the field. We know that an animal, when it grazes 100 different plants, there's an incredible depth of phytochemicals that make their way into the meat. We do not fully understand how these plants are metabolized, how these compounds end up in the meat and things like that. So being able to replicate that in a lab anytime soon is probably going to be difficult. Now, I don't know what's going to happen after my lifetime or in the year 2300, but my guess would be is that we're continuing to raise animals for food. We are continuing to grow crops for food in the field so let's figure out how to do that in the most sustainable way possible that can improve our soils that can improve the health of animals or plants in ways that we can hopefully still do it in the year 2300 and if that means that we're growing some of our food in bioreactors as well then there's a place for that as well I think so it's exploring multiple avenues that is my answer to that

SPEAKER_00: 37:53

and as far as you know have there been any nutrient density studies done on the cellular ag lab grown meat and also I think most of the ingredients like what are the ingredients of these fats it's a lot of sugars as far as I understand like what are the ingredients and has anybody looked at it because I think always it's very easy yeah we're as good as is often a claim somewhere but of course we don't even understand meat to begin with let alone from a lab like do you know of anybody looking at that or that's really like another industry in this infancy

SPEAKER_01: 38:30

yeah I'd say another industry in this infancy to my knowledge there have been no published studies comparing field grown meat if that's how we want to call it now versus lab grown meat in terms of like the nutritional composition the moment they are available I would definitely we will do it in my lab because we have a big interest in that we you know looked at as much as six 1,600 compounds in grass-fed and grain-fed beef. It would be nice to see how that stacks up to meat grown in a petri dish. Now, the idea of growing cells in a petri dish or sort of in a cellular egg, what cellular egg is, people have been doing that in the lab for, I don't know, probably 40, 50 years or so using growth media. We're just now scaling it up because in science, We do take, let's say we take cells from a mouse or a cow, right? And we feed it amino acids, sugar, some fats, vitamins, and minerals to have those cells grow and replicate themselves and they keep them alive, right? And then we usually do research on it. It could be like liver cells and you look at, oh, what is the effect of compound X on liver cells or tumor cells or things like that, right? So that's what people have been using it for. So there's no reason why we could not do that to grow meat as well. But I must note is that getting, you know, basically from a sort of a reductionist standpoint, if we reduce complex foods to protein and fat and carbohydrates and vitamins, then we can provide those simplified compounds, right? And probably get somewhat to that. But like I said, foods contain thousands of biochemicals. And if we're not providing these in the growth media, I'm not sure how we're going to replicate an animal grazing on 200 plants on pasture and creating the same product when we grow it in a cellular egg setting so that is one of the main questions I have at this point

SPEAKER_00: 40:40

and that growth medium where does the fat the sugars and the vitamins come from is that easy to obtain is that like how where do you get that even if you would scale up the petri dish I mean I can imagine where a lab gets it from on small scale because you have to keep these liver cells alive but as soon as you're going to grow massive scale? Like, are we talking like large quantities of inputs and where would that come from?

SPEAKER_01: 41:07

Well, it could be microbial synthesis of these compounds. It could come from plants as well, of course, right? That's where the animal gets it from. So I think we could, I mean, it's going to get scaled up. That's clear, I think, in terms of the cellular ag part. At some point, it will have, you'll You'll see it in the grocery store. I have no doubt about it. I'm not sure if it will replace the entire meat department and the field grown meat will become the niche. I'm just not sure. I don't think it will happen anytime soon in our lifetime, but there's definitely a big interest in it. And yeah, I mean, I'm open to it. Probably the first hunters, when people started farming, right? 10, 15,000 or 10, 12,000 years ago, probably the first hunters thought, you're crazy why are you gonna tend to a plant 12 hours a day 365 days a year of a plant that barely wants to grow right that is super susceptible to pests and then you're working in the field 12 hours a day who would want that i'm sure that's what the first hunters thought as well right hunt together is where we can just forage for it and well we still stuck with agriculture so who knows yeah wow that's what some people say i mean it depends on on how you look at it. If you look at it for species growth and survival, it's the best choice we've ever made because we're able to increase the population from a few million to eight billion, right? So

SPEAKER_00: 42:42

if you look at- Or if you flip it to, I mean, there's some people that would argue where we didn't domesticate, what is it, wheat, but we domesticated us and we brought it everywhere in our travels. So it's, yeah, if you look at it, the staple ones, the crops and also the animals, but mostly the crops. We definitely build our society around ag and around a few, very few staple crops. So there's that question, are we domesticated by it or did we domesticate it and did they just hitch a ride with us?

SPEAKER_01: 43:14

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I'm sure people were then also skeptical or hunters and gatherers thinking like, this is idiotic. Why would you take care of a plant 12 hours a day that doesn't want to grow? Or it's very hard to grow, right? And so I'm sure we are skeptical now as well about cellular ag or many people are I've noticed especially farmers of course but it's not to say that it cannot have a place in the future and if that's sort of what we want in society or moving towards to then yeah that is going to happen and you know maybe we'll see a dip again right when we moved from hunter gathering to agriculture everyone got a little bit weaker a little bit shorter a little bit less robust and then the last, you know, maybe 100, 200 years, you've been kind of making a recovery again where we're probably maybe as tall again as our hunter-gatherer ancestors were. Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 44:12

because that's one of those myths as well that we became better or became healthier or it was better for us to move to ag. But I think hunter-gatherers or what probably the latest research shows, they were pretty okay off in terms of work-life balance, in terms of health, in terms of that in terms of many things. I mean, in terms of violence, et cetera, they seem to be doing at least okay. And then a lot of the-

SPEAKER_01: 44:39

If you were able to navigate the infectious diseases, the wars and the violence, then yeah, you might've been okay. But obviously I think it's important also not to glorify the hunter-gatherer lifestyle too much because, you know, you have famines and difficulties there as well. But yeah, I mean, sort of, if you're able to navigate that, then people seem to be able to at least stay in good health. But yeah, I mean, it's certainly an interesting question and seeing how this moves forward, this entire thing. But yeah, that we are going into this other ag direction and that it's going to be part of our food system. I have no doubt about that. And I also think we should be very open for it.

SPEAKER_00: 45:26

And what about the- If it can

SPEAKER_01: 45:27

improve.

SPEAKER_00: 45:28

Yeah, no, no. Absolutely. I mean, the energy going towards it is enormous. And let's see what pans out of it. And if you would look at the scale, again, why bother with the animal protein, with the grazing? That will never scale. A few pastures can only do it, just like you said some farmers do. Being so deep in the weeds, pun intended, as you are and talk to so many farmers and have seen so many farms, what about the scalability of fully grass-fed, so the real grass-fed and grass-finished? Are we only scratching the surface? Are we kidding ourselves and it stays a very elite, small percentage place and there needs to be something industrial like the CAFO or like the cellular egg? What do you say to, how do we feed the world question, which usually comes up and then it kills any discussion? What's your go-to answer there?

SPEAKER_01: 46:28

Well, I mean, I mean, it's definitely a growing area of agroecology. A lot of the modeling also sort of assumes the current status quo, right? Which is what we're seeing on farms and work like that will be published over time as well. And other groups are working on that as well. Is that what we see with a lot of our farmers that use those rotational grazing practices, they're able to double their stocking rates without overgrazing. So they're able to have twice as many animals on land and are very productive, right? Because they have been increasing their soil organic matter. They have been increasing their plant diversity. Maybe the farmers work with, they're always adding more animals every year and without degrading their pastures. So One thing is as though is that, you know, current work would suggest that we, yes, we may not be able to support or we cannot support a fully grass-fed model here and maybe support only like, you know, 30, 40, 50% of that, right? But that also assumes that we stick with the current status quo, which I think historically we have not done the best grazing practices, right? And with those rotational grazing practices we see, that we can use stocking density. It's also getting more circularity in there using byproducts that oftentimes now go into a landfill. If we can redirect those into animals, it would be crop residues, fruit and vegetables residues, and things like that, right? We're grazing crop fields, integrating crop livestock systems. Oftentimes we're also seeing these as, you know, former A grows crops, former B grows grass for animals, right? It has pasture. But integrated crop livestock systems is stacking multiple enterprises on top of that. And also, I want to highlight this is that we have this myopic focus on cattle, right? I think that's a problem too. I think that that is a problem because monocultures, whether it be crop or livestock, is typically problematic. Maybe we cannot support this with beef only, but if we have as small a fish and herbivores like rabbits, like geese, like sheep or goats that can exploit different different ecological niches, can oftentimes be integrated in diversified livestock systems, which we know this improves grasslands. A paper that came out at PA&S, a very high-end journal last year, I think the title was something like Diversifying Livestocks Can Improve Grasslands, and you could see that, okay, having sheep and cattle integrated, maybe run after each other, quite literally with the cattle grazing first, the sheep following it, the sheep eat different plants, right? You're able to produce more pounds of meat per acreage, right? So there's things that need to improve. Yeah, maybe with the current status quo, we cannot. But when we have multiple animals integrated, we diversify our intake. I mean, a cow has a gestational period similar like a human, right? So it only drops one calf. Thank you. geese or a rabbit or you know a duck has much more offspring they do very well on grass one typical example is for instance we have a big wild boar issue in the southern parts of the us why because they drop 10 piglets right and so those are also things that if we can diversify our intakes then i think we have a bigger chance of supporting more of an agri-ecological model and that's part of agroecology too it is no one of It is polycultures, whether it being animals and plants and preferably where possible integrated. And I think that is something that no one has really calculated yet. But if you look at individual studies, then yeah, you see that there's a chance to support a bigger system. And I also want to highlight the following is that it doesn't mean we have to graze every acre of land that we have, right? Oftentimes we hear rewilding and I'm all for it. having, uh, bringing more native herbivores back and having parts of the land that we perhaps do not graze and things like that. I'm a little bit nervous when we talk about rewilding that it further divides sort of nature and human living like they're separate entities, right? But I won't get

SPEAKER_00: 51:13

on my soapbox about that. Wilder farming is a better term. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01: 51:20

The idea that we are separate from nature is a ridiculous idea. If you would ask any indigenous population, they were like, you're

SPEAKER_00: 51:27

out of your mind, right? That's where it all starts, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 51:31

What do you mean? We're evolving. This is just life. It's just nature. It's the earth. But anyway, we won't go down that rabbit hole. But my point being is that if we do diversify that, and also the important thing to note here is that if that produces more nutrient-dense foods, healthier fatty acid profiles, more vitamin and phytochemically rich foods, we also don't need to eat as much. of it, right? So that's also important. We probably don't have a calorie deficiency here in most Western civilizations. We don't have a, I shouldn't say that there's always, but, you know, a pure protein deficiency, but we do have certain micronutrient deficiencies and diet quality deficiencies. So that is also an important thing to know. It doesn't mean that we have to eat steak for lunch and dinner here, but I do think that we can grow our foods in more agroecological ways that probably would benefit the health of soils. That's what we're seeing in our initial data, the health of the animal and provide more nutrient dense foods. And if it means that we have to consume a little less of it, then, you know, so be it.

SPEAKER_00: 52:48

And I will link below. There's a great short audio clip. I keep saying seven minutes. I don't remember. It's actually the case of Charles Eisenstein who unpacks a bit of the data of a lot of these. You, studies and there's actually quite a bit of data on agroecology indeed to at least match or even outperform on the yield side, a combined yield side of course if you look at multiple non-monoculture systems but I will link it below because I've mentioned it before and just to switch gears a bit in terms of what from your university perspective or your assistant professor perspective deep into the nutrient density research, what do you think investors should know What would your message to, let's say, the financial world, very interested in transition, agroecology, investing in this new wave, but also cautious, obviously, because we've heard many things of food as medicine before. What would be your message to them if we would do this, for instance, in a theater, live, and you say, okay, if you walk away tonight, I would like you to, if there's one thing I would like you to take away from this, it would be this.

SPEAKER_01: 53:58

Yeah, well, if I had a bunch of money to invest, I would invest it in agri-ecology probably because I think this will keep growing, right? And I think, you know, there are certain companies that are pushing this and are really at the front end of supporting this. And I often make the analogy to cars, right? If as a car manufacturer, you do not start investing in electrical cars right now, you might not be around in five or 10 years from now, right? And I think it is safe to say that we will also continue to start moving into agroecology or more integrated systems or more sustainable systems over time. I mean, we kind of have to, right? We have to turn the corner on the fossil fuels at some point. That's just the way it is. So I do not see this thing going down anytime soon. I only see it increasing and increasing after years. And I think if you can sort of get ahead of the game in terms of investors wise, in terms of a company where you start to source from farmers that use these agroecological principles and that, you know, convert their croplands to multi-cropping or more regenerative managed systems. I think that will over time help a company stay more viable, absolutely. And also with the rising prices of fertilizer, fossil fuels, right? It used to be cheap, just when diesel was cheap, it used to be be cheap to have a bunch of expensive materials and fertilizers and put it on the land right but now if you can have a cost saving side of things as well I think that's going to be beneficial and because we see it all like an example of some of the farms maybe the farmers they don't sell more or you know can get at the moment can get a premium for their products maybe not but their$80,000 chemical bill is now all of a sudden$10,000, right? Or the$80,000 input bill is now$10,000. So that's where you're making also a cost savings. So your net profit is higher. Hopefully we get at some point to a model where we start to value nutrient density more rather than yield because that's what we're paying for right now, right? The blueberry that is five times more phytochemically rich doesn't get five times the price versus the blueberry that is

SPEAKER_00: 56:35

five times. What is needed to unlock that? What is what I mean, apart from all the research, is there a pathway in your head or anything that will lead us to, maybe not five times as much, but a much fairer system in terms of nutrient density and paying for quality over quantity?

SPEAKER_01: 56:54

Yeah, I mean, I think we need to come up with biomarkers or methods that we can easily test that. And we're definitely working on that as well. And then, of course, it's going to take an overhaul on sort of the institutional and government level where we start to value that more and start to pay more for that. Yeah, the initial step is to make sure that, hey, we don't grain wash, of course, and that the nutrient density piece becomes or remains evidence-based. But then if you can make a clear case for like, hey, my product is consistently richer in these nutrients that hopefully there can become a premium that is to be paid for that the same as we you know there's movements now towards paying farmers that are building uh carbon in their soil and are they being rewarded for that so again it always has a shallow side where that maybe become my becomes like uh sort of uh you know uh a sort of money-making business. And, you know, let's just say this, capitalism also has sort of a shadow side to it sometimes, right? And you're, sometimes something that's good can also have offshoot targets that can become negative or it becomes a hyper-focus on that. But yeah, I think it is something that, yeah, we need to start founding over time. And of course, I mean, right now it's a grassroots movement, but there is now an interest even from the US government in, paying farmers to place cover crops right and not having them pay for it so that is an incentive of doing that for instance and we know that builds soil health and when you have legumes in your pasture that fixes nitrogen and things like that so It needs to come also from bottom up, but also from the top down.

SPEAKER_00: 58:52

And how would you invest if you, let's say, no longer assistant professor, but you are in charge of a billion-dollar investment fund that has to be invested? Overtime could be very long-term, but I'm not asking dollar amounts. I'm just asking where your priorities would be. You said, if I had money, I would invest in agroecology. But where do you start? Would you buy farms? Would you invest in food companies? Would you invest in technology? What would be your top priorities if you had quite a significant sum? I mean, with this inflation rate, it's not so much anymore, but still, it's a lot of money. What would you do if you had a significant sum to put to work?

SPEAKER_01: 59:33

Yeah, that's a good question. I've been in a business school a long time ago, since I was in business school and made a career switch. But Yeah, probably all of the above, right? It's like we need food companies that are willing to invest in that. But I would start with the farmer really, right? Because they're on the ground producing our food. And if we start rewarding them for doing things that we can reasonably be sure of that improve soil health and nutritional quality, I would start to incentivize those practices. And then I think it's going to have a trickle-down effect into food quality, into food companies that start to value these products, and consumers that start to value these products as well. So that's really where I would start. working you know food companies that work with farmers how to help them convert to more agroecological practices because i think over time that will be a cost saver as well

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:45

and if you had a magic wand and could change one thing over time overnight sorry in the food and egg space what would that be

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:57

That's an excellent question. Maybe five seconds to think about it. But yeah, I'd like to see more integrated systems and more polyculture systems. If I had a magic wand, I would think that we improve things like multi cropping, integrated crop livestock systems, diversifying livestock species. That's what I would hope to see in limiting our external inputs. But we shouldn't do that overnight because that's what Sri Lanka did, or what is it, Bangladesh? No,

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:32

Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka just outlawed chemical fertilizer and stopped the subsidy scheme, I think, which had dreadful... So maybe not a magic wand overnight. Yeah, no, everybody warned for it needs to be a transition, it needs to be slow, you need to pay for the transition, you need to... help farmers and there are great examples in India that have gone through that and are way bigger than Sri Lanka and somehow it became I think a political game as well and suddenly overnight literally overnight but without the magic wand and it had disastrous consequences and it really hurts the agroecology movement because now they have something to point that look when you do that we all starve which of course is grossly under and overestimating the problem but yeah it's The overnight thing only works with the magic wand. That's why it's magic.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:26

Yeah, that's why it's magic. A forester, there's no magic. And it's also, I think that's a problem with mankind. We have a big issue of seeing things in sort of a gray perspective. It's always black and white, right? And so when we're talking about these things is that, yeah, no one is saying stop using synthetic fertilizer, stop using inputs, right? That's not what we're saying at all. But if we can reduce that and find more of a middle ground in that. I think that would be a good thing because sometimes as humans we take something that's good and then maybe take a little too far, right? Upcycling byproducts of industry and grains through ruminants in itself is not a bad idea at all. I think it's a very good idea. But then we take something that's good and maybe...

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:15

To 80-20,

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:16

yeah. Yeah, but then animals in the feedlot and feed them 80% corn to grow them as fast as as fast as we can. And then maybe we took something that in principle is very good, but we took it a little bit too far. So I think that's with agroecology too. It's like finding a middle ground in that is that, yes, we want to implement these agroecological principles. We want to convert over time, but it's the same as like, you know, never ever antibiotics. Why would you not give antibiotics to the animal that's diseased? That's ridiculous, right? And why would you not maybe help with some fertilizer to sort of improve your yields, but you should probably not become completely dependent on them either, as is now the case in a lot of farming systems, right? So it's finding a middle ground in that, and it's also finding a middle ground, I think, you know, usually people are saying with rewilding, people are like, oh, we shouldn't have any animals, no animal agriculture, and we should rewild everything. Well, we should probably find a middle ground in that, you know, between food production systems and rewilding. And yeah, I mean, we see this again when I visit farmers, of course, if we raise cattle on a place, it's going to displace some native wildlife. But then again, some of the farmers that work here on the rangelands, there is definitely also a niche to explore for beavers, for deer that, you know, One of the farms that we work with, they've seen beaver populations increase year after year after year, right? So it can also have good effects. That's a typical example of finding a balance between grazing a livestock and then also helping with wild animals and rewilding. Those things, I think, are what we need to support over time and finding a balance between all of these. That's why the magic wand is my magic wand. I would want to wave it all the time for a couple of decades and just sprinkle a little bit of magic dust on things. We have a transition into the place where we want to be.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:39

Yeah, I think it's also ironic that many of the rewilding examples people then point to, like the involvement of ruminants is like massive and sort of the keystone species effect is enormous and it's really interesting to see that term being misused in so many ways. We've interviewed Isabella Tree, which is very clear on the influence of animals on their land, but also they recently started farming a again on some adjacent land they leased out and we interviewed that farmer as well so it's a very interesting case but way more nuanced than your typical if we just remove all the livestock we farm and then rewild everything else will be fine which of course is not the case and just to round it up as your typical like sort of coming back to has your diet changed or do you pay attention to other things like what because this data isn't out yet there's no nutrient score I mean there's a nutrient score but it's not really so accurate on packaging or anything what any parting words on what we should pay attention to when we when we purchase a food or is it very standard know your farmer know that farmer and make sure you pay attention to the

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:53

flavor yeah pay attention to the flavor of the food because you can taste these things I think with these funny chemicals that we study all the time there

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:02

the people that are going through your study You sort of hope or don't hope that they're going to taste the difference of the seven weeks. I mean, they must taste the difference.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:11

I hope they taste the difference. Yeah, I think so. I mean, maybe they were able to see the difference even because the carrots that we get from the agroecological farmers, they're not the prettiest ones. It might be like a dual carrot, right? And they've never

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:26

been sold in the shop. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:28

that's right. They'll never be shown in the cell. No, not all of them, but you know, I think pay attention to the of fresh produce. And I think also, sort of go through that, all this, when we talk to the participants, all these participants are saying, wow, I feel so much better. I can't believe I didn't do this earlier in my life. Like, you know, my acne

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:51

disappeared. You need a university study to do this, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:57

Yeah, they sort of lost touch with what real food is supposed to taste like. And, you know, many of these phytochemicals, you can And you can taste them. They're flavor compounds. Besides being potential health-promoting compounds, and we certainly need a lot more data in humans on this because most of this has been studied in the context of lab animals. And in humans, there's been some studies on especially polyphenols from fruits and vegetables. But, okay, these are flavor compounds, and you can taste that. So sort of let your palate also guide you a little bit because if you look at a carrot, you cannot measure the nutrient density. But if you go to a farm or a farmer's market, or, you know, even in a grocery store, you can, you can taste the, yeah, you can definitely taste the difference in some of these. I mean, and again, I'm happy to see that many grocery stores now start to advertise or market local produce as well. I especially noticed that when I was in North Carolina, it was like grown only 50 miles away on this farm. Right. So I think once we get more of a culture build around that and sort of, you know, people like putting a face to the farmer and supporting the farm, even if it's a big farm, but it's like, you know, even the big farms are usually made up of small farms and farmers actually grow the food. So if we build a culture around that, I think people start to appreciate that more as well, right? Because part of it is also people are paying for the story and feeling good about how their food was grown, how the animal was raised. So if we are more transparent about that, I think it can improve this as well.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:42

I think it's a perfect ending of this conversation. Thank you so much, Stefan, for sharing and good luck with finishing the beef study, obviously, but also finishing the randomized control trial of agroecology versus supermarket. And I can't wait to see the results and read the results.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:05

Thank you so much, Gordon, for for having me and if any farmers are listening or other people interested in agroecology I'm always interested in engaging in that conversation and hearing from people because I learned a lot also from just you know listening to people on the ground and in the field whether that be in food companies or in as farmers because yeah those are ultimately doing the work and Sometimes I jokingly say is that I just tell you whether you're right or wrong and put data behind it. But most of the times the farmers are right, turns out.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:51

Thanks again and see you next time.