214 Wiley Webb - Why focusing on wholesale buyers is the biggest leverage point in regen food systems

A conversation with Wiley Webb, founder of Permanent, a local foods aggregator and technology company, about eliminating the overhead of local sourcing, wholesale buyers, the power of aggregation and more.
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Chapters

• 2:08 Why are you doing what you are doing? Why Soil?
• 5:10 Why wholesale sourcing focus?
• 29:21 What are smart acupuncture points that you would be building if not this?
• 35:41 What do you believe is true about regenerative agriculture that others don’t believe to be true? Inspired by John Kempf
• 38:51 What would you do if you were in charge of a 1B investment portfolio tomorrow morning?
• 42:35 If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing overnight

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

How do we build local food sheds from the ground up? Our guest of the day argues that after studying all the facets of the food system, working on farms and in food companies across the US, we should start with wholesale buyers. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume. And it's that we as investors, big and small, and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community. And so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you, and if you have the means, and only if you have the means, consider joining us. Find out more on gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. That is gumroad.com slash investing in regen ag. Or find the link below. Welcome to another episode, Today with Permanent, your partner in local, sustainable and wholesale sourcing. It's a local food aggregator and technology company. Their platform and people eliminate the overhead of local sourcing. Welcome Wiley. Hey Koen. And before I start, full disclosure, we are with the syndicate, which we run next to the podcast, a very small investor in Permanent. So I definitely am biased here, but I'm very much looking forward to unpack the story because you've been, let's say, a friend of the podcast for a long time, traveled all over the US and abroad, going deep into the food system and landed on Permanent. And so I'm very curious to unpack that journey of you and of Emma, like what led you into soil, what led you into food and then we're going to unpack permanent, obviously.

SPEAKER_02: 2:13

Yeah. Well, out of growing up in Los Angeles with very finance-y parents, but spirituality very rooted in ecology, those two forces have always been in my heart. And after... school in the Bay Area, working in San Francisco's technology scene. Frankly, Emma and I started listening to a lot of your podcasts and the number of ways you've directly and indirectly influenced the trajectory of our life is extraordinary. That ranges from the Danella Meadows essay on leverage points that gave me the courage to leave my job and start permanent around the strongest leverage points.

SPEAKER_00: 3:14

Which always makes me nervous, but I hope it's a good thing. It's obviously not our white paper, but I will link it below. It's fascinating to go deeper into that.

SPEAKER_02: 3:23

Yeah, it's like shifting your thinking from two dimensions to three dimensions on strategy and systems change and food hearing your interview with Russell Wallach of Breadtree and joining him to plant hundreds of chestnut trees in the Hudson Valley one summer and participating as an investor through your syndicate in Permanent in our first round, introducing me to my first teammate and head of sales, Brian Parman, and of course founding Permanent, but also exposing me to Stuart, the incredible regenerative agriculture lender who financed the acquisition of the 42-acre farm and inn. that Emma and I are starting here on San Juan Island off of Washington, the place beneath my feet and a future host to countless guests coming through and getting a hands-on look to the bounty and diversity of agroforestry

SPEAKER_01: 4:45

systems. And the challenges.

SPEAKER_02: 4:47

And the challenges. yeah

SPEAKER_00: 4:52

it's such a pleasure I mean to to see that journey and we've been in touch for for quite a while so it's been an absolute pleasure to have played a very small year you're definitely I'm you're definitely more generous but playing a very small role in that so let's let's unpack I mean there's so much impact there but let's unpack permanent as it stands today of course it's a startup meaning it I'm saying pivoting constantly but definitely morphing into other shapes and forms I think a very important word in the intro I used was wholesale and sourcing why and how did you land on that particular part of like if you have you could choose where you quit your job you could choose where you would work in the food system but this is the piece you landed on this is the part of the chain or the web or whatever we call it that you said okay that's the most urgent that's the most impactful and that's where I can apply most of my skill set and have fun. Why that piece?

SPEAKER_02: 5:57

Like many people, I found my way into food system change through being a consumer, farmers markets, enjoying small-scale farming and gardening, and didn't have any proper background in the larger, broader food industry. And all grain of salt on this, I still feel like a beginner in food systems. Every time learning more lingo, more acronyms every day. Permanent focuses on shifting wholesale demand by making local sourcing more practical and profitable so that it can compete with the broader industrial long chain. food system. And The reason we're focused there instead of change with consumers or purely change with farmer suppliers or being a pure logistics company is that working with demand, shifting demand, is the best way to pull the rest of the value chain into alignment with better values around regenerative agriculture, equitable sourcing practices and transparency. And why wholesale and large institutional and business buyers like universities and F&B teams and restaurant chains is that one person's decision-making affects how thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people eat. And it takes a lot of hustle to get in the meeting room, but we're finding time and time again our value proposition is resonating And this is opening up local sourcing programs and connecting the dots that'll ultimately affect millions of dollars of food movement and millions of lives in everything from K through 12 schools up to brand name restaurant groups.

SPEAKER_00: 8:11

So you're basically saying... One of those decision makers, not easy to shift there, obviously, and we're going to unpack that further and we're going to discuss that. But once they go, they move a lot of dollars in the food chain and thus can move a lot of food and thus move a lot of food with different values and grown with different practices. So it's a big leverage point compared to which many are doing, which is amazing work, but bringing the farmers markets online and making that process faster and better and cheaper, et cetera, which it will take quite a lot of work to reach 400,000 people eating daily through a farmer's market app, which doesn't mean that that shouldn't be done. So how do you approach it? Because I think the first thought people would have and I would have, and I don't know enough about the wholesale market, is that price is the only thing that matters. And if there's one thing that local food in many cases has, I wouldn't say issues with competing, but it's simply more expensive to grow better food in many cases and I know people are working on making it cheaper etc but if you have to compete with the cheapest industrial coming from far food it might be tricky so how do you meet that and how do you make it more profitable as you said in your which is your focus so

SPEAKER_02: 9:36

two things one is only two yeah decommodify that food and that decision-maker's decision-making process as much as possible so that it's not a head-to-head competition on dino kale grown within 100 miles of a university in the Bay Area versus dino kale grown across the border in Mexico. elevating other factors they care about. And I can go into those. And then second is leveraging the power of aggregation to make prices pretty darn competitive. There's both true and myth, true facts and mythology around the cost of local production and short supply chains somehow being always more expensive, which is not always the case. So we're particularly focused on institutions like universities, business buyers like restaurant chains, who are seeking higher quality, trying to hit their ESG goals around local sustainable sourcing. And last, and actually most common. most promising is to boost their resilience to reduce the volatility of the broader market that they're exposed to and find predictable prices that come from the benefit of having direct short supply chain relationships with local farms and ranches that base their cost structure more on the cost of production than on playing the broader market Or the

SPEAKER_00: 11:44

cost of inputs.

SPEAKER_02: 11:45

Yeah, which is volatility compounded by waves of speculators speculating on speculators. The more middlemen there are involved in any chain.

SPEAKER_00: 11:57

So where do you start then? Is it, I mean, you mentioned the vegetable side and also ranching, like what's the entry point or do you need to offer everything to like a university buyer? Let's say I'm a university buyer and I need to serve those 400,000 people, staff and students every day. Do I have like one giant computer screen now where I buy everything or is it a lot of different systems? Like where do you come in and what do you offer me in terms of making my life easier.

SPEAKER_02: 12:29

Yeah, so we're right around the corner when we record this from actually moving our first orders for our first pilots in the Bay Area, California. and earning our first revenue on this new business model. We're starting at the salad bar, the place where students' and eaters' attention has the most free space. Fresh, amazing ingredients have the most space to shine. And also, branching diversifying that with the most common ingredients schools rely on that give us more wiggle room when it comes to harvest timelines, perishability, and ease of processing. The bigger the buyer gets, the more they rely on processors, companies that chop up a beet into diced beets or carrots into stew-cut carrots. And our local sources have to be compatible with those systems, but preserve source traceability all the way through to that end buyer. So they can still get credit from their students scanning a QR code, seeing a label about the farmer that we provide. and credit with their stakeholders. They're 25% local and sustainable sourcing spend targeting points systems like ashy stars and pledges like the Real Food Challenge or Cool Food Pledge that they're subject to.

SPEAKER_00: 14:16

And so how do you make sure that carrot is being able to follow through from the farm to the processor and then at the end to some canteen somewhere? And how do you, like, how big do you need to be? Like, is a salad bar, let's say what I'm asking, a channel big enough to entry? Or is it, like, nice to have? Like, what kind of volumes are we talking about in terms of these kind of buyers? Now, what kind of volumes? Let's start there. and then we unpack the farmer side. What does it mean for a farmer or a grower to work with you on this compared to the typical farmer's market, et cetera,

SPEAKER_02: 14:58

et cetera? Yeah. We're focused on mid- to large-scale buyers who spend between$1 million and$5 million a year on food, proteins and produce in particular. And mid-scale farms... between, we have about 25 farms signed up at this time in our first supplier hub in the Salinas Valley, California. They're between 10 and 100 acres of vegetable production. Between them, that's surprisingly more than enough food for many, many buyers. And When we're talking about an individual order, it's about a few thousand pounds a week and talking with pallets in volume,

SPEAKER_00: 16:02

yeah. And at the moment, a typical one of those 25 farmers, where do they sell predominantly and why would they join permanent as yet another one on their list, let's say, to work

SPEAKER_01: 16:16

with?

SPEAKER_02: 16:17

Yeah. Well, even though we're a technology company, building useful local sourcing, coordination tools, crop forecasting tools, price predictability, and... all sorts of things, both for ourselves and for our partners and buyers and farmers over time. Number one thing is meeting farmers where they are in the field on their phone with existing relationships that they already trust and not imposing a technology solution from outside. So Who are the farmers we're focused on are mid-scale farms who are mostly selling into distributors or aggregators. They may have some consumer channels built up depending on if they've invested in an in-house sales team or they have that passion internally. Many don't. And we're onboarding farms both directly with reaching out, simply saying, hey, we are starting to work with a number of large buyers in their area who have local sourcing goals and tell us what you grow, your crop plan for the coming year, and it might be a fit. These are slow-moving opportunities, but here's a few examples. It's a really strong value proposition to simply come in as an additional wholesale buyer on the surface and then deepen the relationship and support that farmer with more sales channels over time. almost like an outsourced sales team. But we've also found that even more effective is to not ignore just the power of pre-existing relationships. So partnering with groups that already fight for the economic success of farmers, like cooperatives, nonprofits, and We find that groups like Kitchen Table Advisors, who have helped us bring on our first 25 farms in the Salinas Valley, we share the same mission, wanting more prosperity for the best local farms. And that's a rapid way of bringing more folks into our supply.

SPEAKER_00: 18:56

Local doesn't always mean regenerative. Where do you meet them on or do you screen them or select in terms of, let's say, the focus on soil?

SPEAKER_02: 19:07

Yeah. In short, we're learning how to best engage and get the full depth of regenerative practices farm by farm. Right now, it's a self-reported checklist and collated by additional certifiers or inspections and support services that nonprofit partners provide visiting farms on the ground before we get in the business and regular operation of doing so ourselves. So right now, we're starting with everyone organic certified and GAP certified. GAP stands for Good Agriculture Practices and is required to sell into any institution or retailer. And Yeah, through the power of telling the full story of production at the point of the end buyer and actual consumption, enjoyment, celebration, we believe that that adds more pressure to buyers to get excited about sourcing from the best and provides actual incentives, dollars on the other side, for farmers to adopt better practices year over year. Without that demand side, it's a lot to ask farmers to invest in a business that's already so difficult. And yeah, we're aligning the two more and more every year.

SPEAKER_00: 21:33

And so for a farmer, an extra wholesale, like how much does it make a difference? Is it like 10, 20% a year? Like what could it be? Of course, there's a future talk, but how significant could this be? not in money, but just in terms of, yeah, the difference is to have a wholesale buyer, a predictable one to probably sit down and say, okay, next year we want this amount more kale or this amount more broccoli or this, like to be able to predict how fundamental is that for your typical farmers you're working, you're starting to work with now compared to maybe, I don't know how their normal buyers are, if they're very predictable or they're completely left to the commodity market. I mean, you mentioned decommodification How significant is it? Not even better prices maybe, but just predictability or better partnerships?

SPEAKER_02: 22:25

Yeah. Financial security and predictability is the number one thing. And there's all sorts of great examples that in my travels around the country, visiting over 75 farms everywhere on the spectrum of regenerative practice adoption in every shape and scale and croppings system, all sorts of incredible one-on-one examples of how they have worked out financial security with some of their buyers who had the time to sit down, talk about crop plans, align on a handshake agreement, and take some of the risk out of the farmer's business. And we're trying to support that process both with our people and our platform at some broader and more accessible scale, both for buyers to take that time and empathize with what is growing or what could be growing and reserve inventory and save like a pre-committed handshake agreement and for farmers to communicate what they are doing what's differentiated and what they could grow on the other side in our tools that's all oriented around this crop forecast, this crop calendar that typically takes people's breath away when they see it. Something they've been searching for from a long time. Like the wholesale side or also the farmer side or both? Both. We're all used to seeing those amazing tile charts of a list of vegetables and number of months over the coming year and colors that represent what's in season and what's on edge season and what's ab season. And what we're working on is adding dimension and aggregation to that. So depth of information like actual volumes available over time so buyers can menu plan in advance in alignment with what's actually growing across 10, 50 suppliers in their supply shed. And farmers can communicate exactly what they have, offer incentives and discounts at the right places, and mostly just have the demand side think farther ahead the same way farmers do about availability instead of shoving all of it into a volatile week-over-week market. These two tracks, week-over-week and future commitments, will always play a parallel.

SPEAKER_00: 25:16

That's the currency system like the alternative is week over week very short term focused from the buyer side or to like what is normal university I'm still the university buyer and I'm not working with permanent what does a normal process looks like how do I get my salad bar full of salad all year round

SPEAKER_02: 25:38

yeah normal process looks like opening up your procurement system and placing a purchase order with your your broad line distributor who brings that food the next day or some weekly cadence a few days later. folks are increasingly being burned by some of the brittleness or price changes in traditional supply chains.

SPEAKER_01: 26:12

And

SPEAKER_02: 26:14

permanent is almost, you can almost imagine a second monitor, a second tab open on the computer that provides a longer view and lets buyers augment their week-over-week sourcing and adjustments to what they actually need with longer commitments and all the supplier stories that they care about. It's not common, but one of our advisors to the company ran Harvard's culinary program for years. And he hacked this together the old-fashioned way, calling 50 farmers in his region directly, negotiating and handshaking on the price of chicken breasts for a whole school year. And he loved it, especially for an institution who's not trying to maximize profit or play the market in any way. His entire food program enjoyed stable, consistent prices. Farmers had a huge load off their shoulder and enjoyed a stable buyer. And we're trying to make that a more common behavior. But just like I mentioned before, and not forcing new tools on farmers, we're not forcing new tools on buyers. And like the sell it side?

SPEAKER_00: 27:55

I mean, you mentioned that's where freshness shines the most or is the most apparent. I mean, of course, this might be completely up for grabs. So what's after that? Like, what's next after the salad bar?

SPEAKER_02: 28:08

Yeah. meats and proteins grown in a beautiful, loving way, both from a dollar per unit of food perspective and the amount of care and attention the end eater gives them. Last on the list are value add or processed items, which of course go through an additional step. And yeah, we have a lot to learn about grains, and general commodities, and if some of the same paradigms and patterns would apply in those crops.

SPEAKER_00: 28:49

and I think a lot of people have looked at or approached let's say the short food chains and webs as our friends at TerraGenesis remind us constantly which is very good but what do you see as the major trends now or what is different now what would you tell I mean this is the question I'd like to ask for smart impact investors or smart investors that are maybe listening to this where would you look is that really that wholesale piece or are there other acupuncture points that you have identified that you're not going after now because of course it's way too much to focus on multiple things but what are smart acupuncture points where if you would clone yourself or if you would not be running permanent what would you be building

SPEAKER_02: 29:39

man that's such a good question um Another acupuncture point is the physical infrastructure that enables regional food economies to be economically efficient and just more and more the default in every buyer's decision making of what to source and how. This includes facilities for butchering, slaughterhouses, regional animal processing, Grain milling. general vegetable processing before it goes to a food service company or institution, like I described before, and cooling, warehousing, distribution. The more liquid and flexible a network of third-party logistics and processing is, the more access to sales channels farmers have in their home food shed, and the more access to local supply. Buyers do too. And... We're finding that there's a lot of... We're blessed with a lot of assets and infrastructure there and a lot of collaborative, genuinely optimistic partners in California. Like the distributor we're cross-stocking pallets of vegetables with who delivers them to the end buyer. Helps out countless other distributors with cross-stocking programs too And we have a lot to learn on how regional aggregation works in other regions.

SPEAKER_00: 31:38

Yeah, it seems like, I mean, California, such a big growing state and, of course, such a big consumer state as well. So it feels almost natural that there's a lot happening, let's say, and yet you decided to start there. Why that region? Because it's one of the biggest ag producers in the world, but also doesn't that open you up to a lot of competition as well? Why did you decide that state? or that region to start in? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 32:13

The most motivated universities pulled us in as our anchor buyer. If anywhere, it should be easy and possible to source not just 25%, which is a goal shared by the entire University of California school system, but 80%, 100% locally, it should be California. So there's both the most progress to make, the lowest hanging fruit, metaphorically and literally, and the Bay Area was home for Emma and me for eight years between starting school at Stanford and working in the technology industry in San Francisco before uprooting and starting our travels around the country.

SPEAKER_00: 33:41

And how much, like now, what's the universities you're talking to? What's their percentage of local food? Like the 25 is the goal, but where are they? Are they at one, at five, at 16? Any idea? Like, what are we talking about? Because it feels like, yeah, if there's any place where this should be, quote unquote, easy, it's there. But at the same time, you're saying it's not.

SPEAKER_02: 34:03

Yeah. It's all over the place between 4% and 30%. and that's both due to sourcing practices, the idiosyncratic programs that may support a change in sourcing, like a really passionate chef who drives a menu change. And that's where a company and system like Permanent comes in, which is to help these teams shift their spend beyond relying on passionate individuals who can leave an organization and suddenly the whole procurement program changes again. All that progress lost. And the other reason for the wide variance is variance in measurement, what counts as local, the capacity of existing distributors to keep track of things and report on source traceability when they're ultimately logistics companies providing critical logistics services, but not data companies.

SPEAKER_00: 35:20

Yeah, so maybe it might be more, but nobody knows. Yeah. And what do you believe? I mean, I like to ask this question inspired by John Kempf. What do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture? He asks about agriculture in general, but, um, so where, where are you contrarian? What do you believe to be true? What others don't? Where, let's say if you go to, um, a region ag and food or a regional food, um, conference, where do you really feel like, okay, I agree on most things or quite a few things, but these few, I really

SPEAKER_02: 35:54

don't. Yeah. Um, Uh... We touched on it before, but we really believe in the power of time and putting time on the side of both farmers and buyers by building more empathy from buyers based on what is actually growing and keeping crop inventory information accurate over time. Starting that dialogue of the food economy well before harvest time, even before planting as much as possible. But then zooming out more spiritually and personally, I believe that regenerative agriculture and everything it stands for, like regenerative food economies and food sovereignty, it all begins with pleasure and attention and love for good food. That first amazing peach you bite into, that can change your life. Or a new tropical fruit. I remember sitting down with a Mami Zapote, this large orange pumpkin ginger spiced fruit in Hawaii and just being blown away, having basically a 20-minute experience privately with this incredible fruit. The level of flavor and abundance Earth gives us, largely for free, if we only pause to appreciate it and receive that abundance. So in short, I believe Every intellectual idea about agronomics and regenerative practices, every policy change, every food system's economic motion, like permanent, all starts from the heart when you walk through that gateway of abundance. And you're like, wow, this is delicious. This is important. This is beautiful. And then you ask, okay, on the other side of this, what's possible? How do I make more this for myself and for other people, and then you get into whatever your theory of change for our food system is.

SPEAKER_00: 38:26

And another question I'd like to ask, what would you do if you won't be on, because it's one of the decisions you made, to be a builder in the space, a founder, but if you would be on the investing side and you would be charged to put a billion dollars to work, I'm not saying overnight, let's not put that pressure, let's keep that function of, or the value of time here as well, like this could be long-term investments, you can take your time to put it to work, but at the same time, I think we all agree we're in quite an emergency, so don't take too much time. What would you prioritize? What would you focus on if you had quite a considerable sum, let's say, to put to work, which could be in local food systems or gender food systems, but actually could be fully in seaweed if that's what you believe to be the most impactful space. Where would you drive these resources and put them to work?

SPEAKER_02: 39:21

Yeah, that$1 billion number is a crazy number. That's 1,000 millions. And whether

SPEAKER_00: 39:32

it's- That's a nice way to think about it, by the way. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 39:34

1,000 million. Yeah, so whether it's$1,000 million investments or 110 million ones, What we've learned is just how critical it is to have demand, supply, and the logistics that connect them collaborate towards the same end. And an investment strategy could hypothetically be split between equal thirds and critically equal thirds within the same geographic region. And maybe you could divide that further into a third of those 333 supply-side farming investments go into new ventures, risky, creative new things from impact-oriented startups a third into a lending pool for just circular capital that never dies on a short-term two- to five-year lending timeline, and a third into infrastructure and investments that stick that value in the ground, whether it's a new processing center or a better equipped farm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:06

And which region would you focus on?

SPEAKER_02: 41:09

Man, um... Perhaps the purpose of this hypothetical fund would be to learn how different regions compare tracking impact and return on dollars, both in more rural economies that have been most sucked dry by a long chain industrial food system or in large metros where there's simply the most demand and farming regeneratively and locally should almost be considered part of the human right to good food and a community and states not public programs per se, but considered a critical part of a functioning economy. So some split between temperate and tropical regions, rural and metro regions to learn. So for the next billion-dollar fund you launch.

SPEAKER_00: 42:56

So you can apply your lessons learned, yeah. And if you could change one thing overnight... So no longer with the fund, unfortunately, but you have a magic wand and you can change one thing. What would that be? As you have seen so much in this space, talk to so many people and of course biting your teeth now into a very, very challenging issue. And in terms of wholesale, what would you change overnight from all of what you've seen?

SPEAKER_02: 43:28

Yeah. To... Tap that magic wand and offer more of that time and attention to cultivating a bit, maybe 5% of one's own food, and the time and attention to honor that food and every meal you eat, breakfast, lunch, dinner, with the fullest pleasure and attention possible. It goes back to that theory of change I spoke to before on walking through with pleasure first. And I've pulled up this essay from Wendell Berry that ends with a beautiful paragraph. Should I read it real quick?

SPEAKER_00: 44:24

Absolutely. Go for

SPEAKER_02: 44:27

it. So this is Wendell Berry, an amazing farmer and agricultural philosopher for his essay called The Pleasures of Eating. He's ending the essay here, summarizing, I mentioned earlier the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of food, but to speak of the pleasure of eating is to go beyond those categories. Eating with the fullest pleasure, pleasure that is that does not depend on ignorance, is perhaps the most profound enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure, we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude for your living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. Yeah, it almost makes me tear up every time.

SPEAKER_00: 45:21

And why then do you say five percent and not 50 or 80 or like is the five the entry point or is that enough you think okay once people really enjoy the pleasure of food it will spread or what makes you say five

SPEAKER_02: 45:40

yeah um uh practicality baby steps um also believe that if you start with five then soon soon you might find yourself going to 50 or finding your way self-originating or playing a creative role in your own life, in your own community, in some way that's not food. And of course, personally, Emma and I have landed on a small island off the coast of Washington called San Juan, population 15,000. with a lot of amazing homesteads, fully self-sufficient, off-grid. One version of Garden of Eden way of living. And one that isn't practical or accessible to every human on the planet. And starting a... a farm and a nine-bedroom B&B that welcomes the public in as much as possible, per the goal of exposing everyone to as much abundance as possible, growing as much life and diversity on every square inch of the property, will be largely self-sufficient or sourcing directly from the best producers on the islands, plus our favorite producers producers for the beautiful things like avocados and olive oil and citrus directly from California. But all that to say, baby steps and curiosity and love and one soul's adventure follows on making every bite of food some point of connection with the earth right underneath you or with the local food shed around you.

SPEAKER_00: 47:47

And do you see that same interest, I would say, or level of curiosity in an average wholesale buyer, I guess, as... Or is that you're saying, okay, we get you the freshest, best tasting or least perishable. Maybe that's more important. It looks the nicest on your salad bar and you get some good stories to tell as well. Or is that shifting? Is that attention for the connection with the land under your feet almost directly? Can you have those philosophical discussions with the people you talk to in these larger institutions? I mean, for sure the answer depends it depends as always but just just out of curiosity

SPEAKER_02: 48:31

yeah it's such a good question yes and in some way it's a little oil and vinegar um where a head of procurement and his spiritual connection to animal agriculture and stories of growing up on a small farm in India and being fully behind a local sourcing program from a values perspective is one thing. That's the heart that initiates the program. That won't show up on the quarterly stakeholder report where they're maximizing points towards systems and keeping their spend in check and oil and vinegar but that's you know you make a good vinaigrette out of the two when you shake it up enough so Yeah, we find that the push towards local food economies, local sourcing programs is never just in pursuit of one variable like predictable price or climate outcomes or regional economic impact or simply broadcasting a better brand by sourcing ethically and directly. It's all of it at once and It takes conversations and a nuanced and holistic approach to turn the key in the door that opens opportunities with each of these buyers and unlock

SPEAKER_00: 50:17

that demand for

SPEAKER_02: 50:17

farmers.

SPEAKER_00: 50:19

And as a final question, let's say we talk in a year from now, what should we absolutely be discussing? What should I absolutely ask about the last 12 months of Permanent, the past 12 months and your ups and downs and all of that? But what do you think? I mean, of course, looking forward, looking back at the same time, what should we absolutely be discussing?

SPEAKER_02: 50:44

Yeah. How did you mesh ambitions and aspirations of building a globally scalable marketplace for completely local and regional food sourcing. How did you stay true to the uniqueness of every region? and stay curious and present for those baby steps region by region and while you were making progress and creating so much. How did you stay embodied in your own life with your feet on the farm and remembering the joy of beautiful food every day and take enough time to enjoy the fruits, literal and metaphorical, of all this food system change, which can really feel abstract and disembodied at time until you remember, yeah, you gather in community, you meet all the farmers you're sourcing with at a conference, you see a new menu.

SPEAKER_00: 52:09

Yeah. I will remember when we record again. I want to thank you so much, Riley, for your time today. And of course, good luck in the next very, very busy months because this is the beginning of a long mountain to climb. At the beginning, I mean, somewhere along a long mountain climb because it's not that you woke up this morning and this is the first day. Thank you, Ken. So good luck. And thank you for sharing and coming here.

UNKNOWN: 52:37

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 52:42

Thanks again and see you next time.