286 Anthony Myint - Sourcing better isn’t going to change the food system, award-winning chef might have the silver bullet for system change

A conversation with Anthony Myint, co-founder and executive director of Zero Foodprint. Award winning chef, Myint was disappointed about his impact on acres by his farm to table restaurants and he is now fully committed to systems change. Koen and Anthony talk about how to really move the needle on many more new practice acres which are acres where regenerative practices are used for the first time, opting out mechanisms where a small opt out fee is added to restaurant bills and food products, collective regeneration, and much more.

When Anthony traded his chef's hat for the mantle of environmental advocate, the culinary world didn't just lose a master of the kitchen—it gained a potent champion for the planet. This episode brings you the powerful narrative of a food industry insider who realized his farm-to-table establishments were merely a drop in the regenerative agriculture bucket. Now, he's on a mission to create waves of change through strategic partnerships and investing directly into soil and ecosystem revival.
 
The gastronomic landscape is ripe for revolution, and Zero Footprint is leading the charge. Anthony lifts the veil on the potential of opt-out fees—a simple yet surprisingly effective tool for gathering communal resources to nourish our ailing earth.
 
 With his rich tapestry of experience, Anthony guides us through the complexities of regenerative grazing, the importance of local policies in supporting farmers, and the need for robust investment in compost infrastructure.
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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.

https://foodhub.nl/en/opleidingen/your-path-forward-in-regenerative-food-and-agriculture/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:19

An award-winning chef, was disappointed by his impact on acres and hectares by his farm-to-table restaurants, and now he's fully committed to systems change. How do we really really move the needle on many more new practice acres, which means new acres where regenerative practices are practiced for the first time Not by new taxes, which are very difficult to pass in the current political environment, but by opt-out mechanisms where a small opt-out fee is added to restaurant bills, food products, etc. 1% and research shows that hardly anyone opts out and 1% is more than enough to kickstart regeneration on a lot of additional hectares and it gives local governments and regional governments a tool that they can implement tomorrow to regenerate a lot of hectares in their region. That is collective regeneration. 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.

Speaker 1: 1:33

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 NRZ, grower, food, what we eat, where and consume and it's time 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. 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 gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAC that is, gumroadcom slash investing in RegenAC or find the link below Welcome to another episode Today with the co-founder and executive director of Zero Footprint, an award-winning chef and restaurateur. Welcome, anthony.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Okay, how's it going?

Speaker 1: 2:37

Very well. I'm looking forward to this conversation. We somehow I don't think we've been talking more about the chef space and restaurant space, but at least off podcast, let's say it's been coming up more and more and it's a world that I don't know very well, but you do absolutely, and so I'm very much looking forward to unpack your journey. And we always like to start. I mean, you're listening or listener of the podcast, so you know, you know the drill. We start with the question why soil and how did you end up focusing on that?

Speaker 2: 3:11

Yeah, I'm excited First because you know, the restaurant industry is maybe the biggest part of the food economy and to my knowledge I don't know if you've had chefs and restaurant people on before so hopefully we get into that. And I mean, I think, soil we first started working on climate after having a daughter and then started to focus on soil after learning about the really big opportunity in regenerative agriculture and so we kind of immediately gravitated towards, you know, a farm to table restaurant championing regenerative agriculture. So this was all the way back in 2015. We were serving beef from the marine carbon project pilots. We had a sourdough bread program, you know, with Kernza, the perennial grain from the land Institute, and you know, at the time getting the Kernza almost felt like a backroom deal, you know, and it was pretty.

Speaker 1: 4:00

I'm laughing because of the audio which listeners cannot see, but there's a box behind you which has Kernza on it.

Speaker 2: 4:05

So there's a funny reference.

Speaker 1: 4:07

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:10

But then after a few years, you know, maybe a journalist asked me hey, you know, how is this, what impact is this having in the field? You know, I get that you're raising awareness, it's exciting, you know, but how many acres changed? And I'll be honest and say like we didn't know. So we started asking the farmers and just trying to kind of peel back the layers of the onion of systems change and started to realize like, oh, actually, you know, consumers, buying a nice thing, paying a premium, may or may not actually lead to direct acreage change. And I remember, like talking to soil scientists, you know, after a, you know, regenerative ag happy hour, I kind of did my rah-rah speech and you know we had a couple beers. The guy kind of said to me like hey, dude, you realize the whole organic movement is 1% of acres after 50 years, right, and so I'll just be honest like I hadn't known that at the time. You know we were in the in San Francisco, in the Bay Area. You know it's kind of Alice waters country.

Speaker 2: 5:06

The bubble you saw organic on the shelf at Walmart et cetera, you thought things were changing. And I think that that was a pretty harsh realization, Like we had kind of gone all in with our life savings only to realize like, oh it's, it may not actually make a difference. So we pivoted and started collaborations with the state of California after that. So looking forward to getting into those details.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And so what happened to the restaurant? What made you? What did you decide to do with that?

Speaker 2: 5:36

Yeah, so that restaurant we closed in 2019 to kind of give ourselves a lot of bandwidth and time to focus on these new public-private collaborations.

Speaker 2: 5:48

And before that actually, yes, we feel very fortunate that we closed a little bit before COVID started, so that's definitely a silver lining. And then prior to that I had a bunch of other restaurants. We almost, like inadvertently, trailblazed the pop-up movement. It turned into a permanent pop-up. That was kind of a party Chinese restaurant called Mission Chinese Food. That was popular in New York. You know one restaurant of the year in the New York Times, but a lot of those closed around that time and because of COVID, and so there's one location still kind of hanging out in the Bay Area. But I'm definitely, you know, all in on the nonprofit work and the systems change work.

Speaker 1: 6:28

Do you miss the restaurateur and chef piece?

Speaker 2: 6:33

Do I miss it? Well, I mean I miss the team and the camaraderie and the flow and the you know beers after work and all the things, but I feel like what Zero Free Print is doing now has a real chance of making transformative change. So I'm, I think, with all the chaos in the world and stuff, I feel very privileged and fortunate to like have something positive and optimistic to work on.

Speaker 1: 6:58

And so let's unpack Zero Food Print. Of course I'll put the link below and people can not now, but people can go and have a look. But to unpack the system, change piece a bit, especially like the restaurant space, where we haven't had. We had chef Dan Barber a while ago and but it was more on seats, it was on different things and, of course, the role of chef and nutrition density, plus it was a short interview so we didn't have a lot to go. We should have him back, but let's say the chefs haven't been very numerous yet. On this podcast I'm curious to explore what the restaurant space and the out of home eating space, let's say, can do. So Zero Food Print. If let's start on peeling that onion a bit, what is it at the moment? We're talking beginning of 2024? How would you describe it?

Speaker 2: 7:48

Well, the first thing to say is that it has evolved a lot.

Speaker 2: 7:51

So what it was before was almost kind of like restaurant industry crowdfunding to implement regenerative ag.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Since then it's shifted and I would say, in a way, we're advancing regenerative agriculture through a new approach. So I'm going to call it, over the course of this conversation, collective regeneration. So in the US, for example, this would be a way to engage kind of like the broader $8 billion food economy, most of which, as you mentioned before, aggregated extractive corporate supply chains, and so I think what we're trying to do now is almost create a pathway for any of these companies to just immediately regenerate. You could also think of it like kind of carbon in setting or just sort of like a very direct way to financially almost like improve the food grid. So, also, since this is such a systems change focus show, I'm going to be excited to delve into kind of some of the analogies between the shift in renewable energy and the potential shift in regenerative ag, and so trying to use some of those same frameworks that are helping society completely change energy production and use, and how we can use that to change agriculture towards regenerative.

Speaker 1: 9:11

And there's a lot to unpack there, but let's unpack Zero Footprint a bit more. What are the different actors you interact with, let's say, in the food space? Because for systems change you need a lot of them. So what is your approach there?

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah, so we basically have two functions. One is working with anybody in the private sector, or even like federal, state and local government. But in the private sector a lot of Zero Footprint businesses are restaurants, but we also have wine companies, spirits, consumer packaged goods, compost companies, and so a lot of these businesses are sending 1% of revenue. It could be through an opt out fee, it could be other mechanisms, and then other corporations and companies are simply making donations and putting money into a fund. We then deploy the fund and so that grant program is called you know we're really active in California and Colorado, so it's called Restore California, restore Colorado.

Speaker 2: 10:15

Later this year we'll be expanding to the Northwest and the Northeast in the US, but then we deploy those funds in concert with local technical assistance providers. So it could be the resource conservation districts in California. You know conservation districts in Colorado, soil, water conservation districts around the country. It could be like University Cooperative Extensions, it could be NGOs like Mad Agriculture or Point Blue Conservation Science, and so then we deploy the funds through this grant program where we're basically trying to optimize the cost effectiveness on basically like the amount of carbon sequestration per dollar.

Speaker 1: 10:52

And that 1% because it was, I think, close to the first iteration of this approach, like you, like almost crowdfunding through restaurants. If we take a step back, how did that look like? Like, how did you start thinking about funding and systemic change in this way, really coming out of the restaurant space and thinking, yes, the restaurants I'm running, or the restaurant and restaurants, are just not having the acreage impact it could have. Let's step into another source of income for change. What was the first iteration of Zero Footprint? Or that iteration, let's say, of Zero Footprint?

Speaker 2: 11:28

Yeah. So actually that first iteration was working with chefs and restaurants to have them go carbon neutral. So it was just trying to create a pathway at all for restaurants to kind of do their part on climate. So we worked with a company called Three Degrees Inc. Which used to be called TerraPass, and they conducted 57 lifecycle assessments. So it could have been a burger shop, a coffee shop, the corporate cafeteria at a big company, three Michelin star restaurant, and what came out of all that research was basically two things Every single business could easily go carbon neutral for 1%, and then the vast majority of the carbon footprint was ingredients. So I can say pretty clearly now something I didn't even have the ability to articulate back then, which is just that chefs and restaurants need a way to change how food is grown, to just directly change farming, in order to have many impact. You could make a different choice, but that's not actually changing any acres.

Speaker 1: 12:26

let's say, why is that? If I pick a different choice, you mean for a different supplier or a different ingredient that has a lower carbon footprint?

Speaker 2: 12:38

In a way, either. So let's first go with supplier, so you're sourcing the conventional carrots or something you make a shift. You go farm to table, you go to the farmer's market, you buy the good carrots. In a way, no acres have changed, you've bought the good carrots. That farmer hasn't sold those good carrots to somebody else. Maybe the farmer has a slightly better livelihood. I'm all for supporting regenerative farmers. We did that for years with our kind of going all in with our restaurant. But if the actual goal is changing acres, maybe that farmer is using the money to buy a new truck, put his kid through college, whatever, not judging anybody. But there's no part of the good food purchase. There's not 1%, 10%, some amount earmarked for actually changing acres.

Speaker 1: 13:30

We're changing the original carrots.

Speaker 2: 13:32

Yeah, for the farmer to plant the hedgerows. Maybe they're already organic, maybe the carrots are already good. There's nothing for them to do. The next practice it's not required as part of the purchase, and so if our goal, society's goal, is to make this change happen, and we started to feel like there needs to be a more direct mechanism, and that was adding, which sounds very little like 1% in a potentially carbon-heavy sector like the restaurant space, of course, compared to energy and cement and things like that.

Speaker 1: 14:08

But there's a lot of waste, there's a lot of energy, there are a lot of people, there's a lot of movement and, of course, a lot of ingredients that could be. That seems very reasonable. How far did that program get? How many restaurants did you work with? How did that iteration pan out?

Speaker 2: 14:27

Also a lot of the restaurants that we're working with their footprints still are, and so currently we have about 75 business members. Like I said, it ranges all between restaurants, consumer packaged goods, even compost companies, and then the main shift that we made was, at the time we were having restaurants by carbon credits, et cetera. After some kind of digging, we started to learn that there's a like in the whole carbon credit industry. There's a lot of attrition, and so, again, not judging industries, but project developers, financiers, et cetera, where the vast majority of the proceeds weren't making it to the farm, and also all the challenges that you and your listeners know with, like MRV and reporting and additionality and permanence and all the different things. And so we just started to shift the program to just directly fund the change, like directly funding the implementation of the next practice on the next acre.

Speaker 1: 15:28

And so now, with, let's say, the broader focus of Zero Footprint, how you really specifically mentioned California and Colorado, I mean California and the center of Colorado as well what triggered that sort of regional or state approach instead of making it way broader?

Speaker 2: 15:51

Well, so I think that what we did first was start to have a long exploratory process with a bunch of carbon farming experts, conservation districts, state agencies, and then eventually, the collaboration with the state of California began, first through the California Air Resources Board, which oversees the state's greenhouse gas reduction fund, basically like the cap and trade program, and then brought into include California Department of Food and Ag. And so in the course of those conversations, I'm going to way oversimplify it, but what we learned was like okay, the state of California wants to solve the climate crisis, there's not enough money. If they were going to use state funds to transition a bunch of acres, that would mean defunding other critical services, you know, education, mass transit, electrification, etc. And so, like, just using the existing federal government budget, state government budget, local government budget, there would never be enough to make the change happen as quickly as needed. And so the goal was really to almost like, grow the pie you know, not just get a slice of the pie but grow it.

Speaker 2: 17:02

So how would we grow it to get the private sector involved, which is actually, you know, a huge economy? Of course, the challenge if your government is, you can't tax anybody, you can't pass the votes, and so basically there's a cat meowing. I don't know if that's a problem, but basically what we were creating was a program that could help grow the pie, and you know if you'll entertain this thought in a lot of ways, the approach that we took is optional but opt out fees, and that in a lot of ways, mirrors what's going on in renewable energy, where you might have, you know, a dollar on an energy bill, start going to improve the grid, and so that's a completely different program from like trying to encourage homeowners to put solar panels on the roof. You know you kind of need both in a way, for the homeowner, it's great to put the solar panel on the roof and the battery, and you're more resilient and you're kind of like moving a little bit off the grid and decentralizing.

Speaker 2: 18:02

But you also from that kind of like collective action program with a dollar on the grid or, you know, dollar on the energy bill, huge cities like Los Angeles or San Diego or San Jose can commit 200% renewable energy, you know. And so that dollar on the bill is almost like frictionless. You know, nobody needs to reinvent their lives. Let's do both at the same time. And so as we began these collaborations with California, we embarked on kind of creating that frictionless program where any money could come in and transition acres. It just happens to be that a lot of the money coming in is from our business members and our crowdfunding work in the first place at the moment.

Speaker 1: 18:40

And then when you look at acres to transition and there are quite a few in California where do you start, like, how do you prioritize, because you don't have the resources to do them all? Like, where do you prioritize which acres go first and how do you pick them?

Speaker 2: 19:00

Yeah, that's really the heart of the question. So the system that we devised with a bunch of stakeholders was, to, you know, I guess the first step was kind of asking farmers and asking conservation experts what they would do, what would be needed, and the answer was basically you know, a create an extremely simple and streamlined application process, you know, not like five hour application, not a bunch of essay contests, just very straightforward. And then what we embarked on was to try to optimize it, try to optimize the cost effectiveness of the carbon sequestration through that work. And so basically we use modeling tools like the Comet Planner and other science based guidance. To, you know, basically have a farmer input a project, but we almost treat them like a contractor, so it's not a donation to a farm. They're outlining a practice or two practices.

Speaker 2: 19:54

Let's say the farmer wants to apply compost and plant cover crops. You know they want to apply compost on 10 acres and plant cover crops on 30 acres, and so then they apply those, you know, kind of plug the project into the modeling tool which estimates how much carbon sequestration, and then they basically request a grant from us, you know, kind of commensurate with their real world costs. Maybe they want $15,000. And maybe the project sequesters 150 tons of carbon according to the model, and so in that scenario the project would be $100 per ton of carbon sequestration. What we're finding so far is that farmers are up for this because it's you know, the models are very simple it takes maybe a minute to estimate the carbon sequestration of a project, and that overall, we've been able to get projects done for maybe in the range of like $30 per ton, which is very reasonable if you think about it, and so it's really unlike the farmer.

Speaker 1: 20:57

And do you refuse projects that, like the pick focus areas, like more like in a watershed or in a region that you want to focus on compared to other places? Again, how do you pick and choose? Because actually maybe it's a flip question Do you have more farmers requesting than you have budget at the moment and funding at the moment, or how does that work?

Speaker 2: 21:21

Yeah, so great questions. We have about five times as many requests as dollars, basically, so you have to choose.

Speaker 2: 21:29

We have to choose, for sure. And I mean that mirrors kind of like a state or a nationwide issue in the US where, like you know, I think there was a report from the environmental working group showing a backlog on equip and the conservation stewardship program of 100,000 farmers, you know. So, whether it's our program or the more established, of course, usda programs, many farmers want to transition. The issue is kind of how to do that. And so for us back to your other question about, like you know, do we have focus areas? A lot of it is through our partners so we might work with, you know, a farm group that works with underserved farmers, so then that's definitely a focus area. We have bonuses for equity and other things, and then we're starting a lot of kind of county level collaborations. And so, you know, you can imagine, because regenerative agriculture creates so much soil wealth, you know, and it's kind of like place-based climate and resilience, you know benefits that a lot of cities and counties would be interested in that.

Speaker 2: 22:31

But a lot of cities and counties don't necessarily understand agriculture, you know, almost like don't know where to begin, and so we're finding really great opportunities with, like, sonoma County, boulder County, maybe San Diego almost to have this program be like an on-ramp to a local program Again, like imagine Los Angeles has a dollar per energy bill or something to improve the grid and change everything.

Speaker 2: 22:52

You know they didn't go from zero to just implementing that, like advocates along the way made it seem plausible and so I think we're trying to do that. But that system that I described is sort of like having a you know queue of 100 shovel-ready projects, let's say in a city or county, kind of sorted by cost effectiveness. That makes it possible then you know when $100,000 shows up, when a million dollars shows up, to just plug it into the next project, or a dollar even. And so that's kind of the pitch to a lot of businesses is like here's a way to take, you know, real legitimate local climate action to really change acres and scale regenerative ag. You know, get any amount of money. You could even do it through an opt-out fee where you know it's not coming from the business's bottom line but from the customer who also wants to feel good about their purchase and just wants to, you know, improve local climate resilience and water conservation and other elements of soil.

Speaker 1: 23:48

Yeah, because I can imagine that that local piece triggers businesses again, especially, not especially restaurants in general, but anybody with a local footprint is much more interested, or potentially more interested, than to have something in Sonoma County compared to Boulder, which just is far away, or the other side of the country, or the other side of the planet. And so is this leading to systems change? Like coming back to the central question, like do you see, compared to the shock you had, let's say, when you were challenged, when you owned and managed the restaurants and the acreage you were touching directly and indirectly, and like how do you feel now about the systems change piece, Well, I mean, I feel I'm obviously drinking my own Kool-Aid here, but I feel great about it because I think that you know, when you work directly with a farmer, provide a $20,000 grant to implement you know, three or four practices on 20 acres.

Speaker 2: 24:50

You know that those practices occurred, you know. So it's not a carbon credit in Ethiopia or something like. I don't know if that occurred, like we kind of know through that kind of boots on the groundwork. But then also, what we're finding is that, you know, whereas our membership used to be like the Michelin-starred chef, you know who, super high integrity, et cetera, now we've got all stripes of businesses. So you know the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, subway sandwiches is participating with five locations in Boulder, and so that to me is almost like indicative of the fact that any element of the entire food economy could participate. So Subway adds, you know you go into the Subway location. Let's say there's some simple signs. You know we're teaming up with farms and ranches to conserve water and build a healthy soil. A 1% fee is added. Any diner may opt out. You know the franchisee reports after maybe 20 months, literally zero diners have opted out.

Speaker 1: 25:50

Yeah, I was going to ask her what's the opt-out rate for these kind of things.

Speaker 2: 25:54

Yeah, a lot of you know. Behavioral psychology kind of shows like you know almost nobody opts out of anything. You know people also barely ever opt into anything, and so, in the simplest, way.

Speaker 1: 26:05

So the key lesson is opt-out is absolutely where you want to go for.

Speaker 2: 26:09

To me definitely, and in a way I would make the case that opt-out could be a silver bullet for climate. So I'll get into that in a second. But basically, drawing out the Subway example, you know I think the guy keeps a little like have a penny, take a penny thing on the counter with dimes in it. So if somebody wanted to opt out they could. But it's so nominal, nobody has opted out. If Subway corporate did this, that would be $160 million a year. So really big change could happen.

Speaker 2: 26:40

But at the same time I think we all kind of understand corporate law. You can't really collect the money and then use it for practices that you know aren't directly related to profitability. Like, basically, if Subway was charging people this money, the CFO would probably be obligated to direct it to shareholders. And so what's useful about that opt-out and why I think it's kind of a silver bullet, is that in that case the customer has technically chosen to send it to the farm project, so that CFO, you know whether they're a good person or not. They don't have a choice. You know that option by the customer is almost like a tip or a gratuity, where you know it's not going to corporate. The customer has directed it to the wait staff, for example, in this case at Subway, the customer is directing it to the farm projects and then going back to government. The reason that's exciting is because you could start to imagine.

Speaker 2: 27:34

Sonoma County passes an ordinance. Now every restaurant will send 1%. Now you've got $8 million a year. San Diego could pass an ordinance. That would be $130 million a year.

Speaker 1: 27:46

You know, very quickly everything starts changing, like it's a very, very subtle difference there, because taxes, as you mentioned before, unlikely to pass the next, like we all know. We should tax more at better and in a different way, but that's probably not going to happen and this is sort of a Trojan horse in that sense, or a silver bullet.

Speaker 2: 28:07

Yeah. So you know I didn't say the word tax, you did. But you know, basically we talk about optional fees. But going back to renewable energy, that dollar on the energy bill is the same situation where if the government could tax, they would do it, solve the problem, change the energy grid they can't. So they implemented these dollar on the energy bill opt out programs and the key there is that if a third party collects the funds, then and it's an opt out and it's optional, technically it's not required then you don't need a ballot initiative.

Speaker 2: 28:40

So now you've got a situation where, like you know, three people on the San Diego County supervisors board could just decide like, hey, we need to do this, it's no big deal, there's a lot of tourism and any customer can opt out, any business can opt out, you know, but let's make transition to regenerative agriculture the new normal. San Diego would be a great place for this. You know there's 6,000 farms, 240,000 acres, and so $130 million a year from a couple cents per sandwich, you know, glass of wine or whatever could just change the whole thing immediately.

Speaker 1: 29:14

Yeah because it sounds like you've done the math. How soon would that be like in a scale of a city like San Diego and the area around? Like how many years? Like with transition partners and like how quickly could we, could we see? I mean, how quickly you see results is almost immediately. But how, how soon would you say okay, then it's almost not needed anymore. Like when? When is the transition not complete because you're never done, but when is it enough on the way to you say, okay, we can, we can stop here because it's been kickstarted. What? What do you think? Because obviously you've not done it at this scale. But what? What is your reasoning there?

Speaker 2: 29:55

Well, the goal for us is to get enough kind of businesses in a region that city council members, county supervisors would feel that it's plausible and palatable and not a big political risk. Concurrently we're working to kind of create the you know we have model ordinances drafted.

Speaker 2: 30:14

We're working with different policy experts to kind of help move this along. What I've heard before is that in renewable energy, the first program of this sort it's called CCA Community Choice Aggregation came about in Marin County, california, and it took about 10 years for that program, you know, from first discussion to implementation. The second program came about in Sonoma County in 2014, and now California has 25 CCA programs. You know, like I said, los Angeles, san Diego, huge cities and counties, and so if it's that same trajectory, you know the first program could begin in eight years. You know, 10 years, something like that.

Speaker 2: 30:56

I hope it can begin more quickly, like we're already kind of in these discussions with city council and using Sonoma County as an example, you know they've had 400,000 acres of wildfire since 2015.

Speaker 2: 31:07

They've declared a climate emergency. A sequester local program to build up the economic capacity for carbon sequestration is already in their climate strategy. These, the local trash companies they're a food print and local businesses are all named in the strategy as potential implementation partners. So I feel like a lot of that kind of early, you know, concept work is in place and now it's just a question of how quickly they implement the strategy and, you know, could philanthropy, could other sectors help accelerate that, you know. So it's not just, you know, me and my small team trying to get city councils, but other folks like there's a lot of effort on kind of changing the federal farm bill, which is crucial of course, but can't we change, you know, if one county at a time started to commit to 100% regenerative ag, I mean that would be, you know, equally important kind of a grassroots movement, one region at a time.

Speaker 1: 32:04

And so what are other things we can learn? Because we often refer to it actually in the podcast from the renewable energy space on Marni investing piece like I'm now able as a normal citizen to put 1000 euros or 1000 dollars or even less in some cases into projects like it really became bankable. It became investable over time and, of course, thanks to a lot of pioneers 15, 20, probably 25 years ago as well and some policy work in Germany and many other places. So hopefully this is going to go faster and I think food and ag is different than energy because it's way closer to us in many instances. But what can we learn? What do you see as the biggest lessons we can take from the renewable energy space? Not necessarily about the investing piece, but about the policy piece and about, like, massive change and systems change, as you refer to.

Speaker 2: 32:54

So I love that we're talking about renewable energy, but I should also say I'm not a renewable energy expert, so pardon any kind of naivete, but you know, what I understand is that in the case of the dollar and the energy bill, let's say you know, if you're a consumer you pay the dollar, it's like your whole energy transaction for the month you pay your energy bill, that $1, check the box Food would be way more complicated because you've got the farmer, the processor, the brand, the distributor, the retailer. Then you're the consumer. You've got waste management, healthcare. There's so many different levels of the value chain. To start getting everybody bought in is complicated. And of course, as everybody knows, like you know, if a farmer were trying to implement like a hundred thousand dollar project, probably the farmer can't afford to do it. But how do you get those 10 levels of the value chain to chip in? You know how would you get the county, state and federal government to chip in and everybody pay one tenth of the hundred thousand dollar project or something.

Speaker 2: 33:56

And so I think a lot of our work you know, has almost shifted from like activism and awareness and messaging you know the cultural capital of the restaurant industry and chefs to more like payment processing. You know government compliance, trying to create those pathways to actually enable that to happen. And then in renewables you can imagine a similar effort where, like, it takes the federal subsidy, it takes the local subsidy and it also takes, you know, the dollar and the energy bill or the energy savings that the consumer might experience over 12 years or something. And then when all those factors line up, then you start to have adoption, and so that ability to like blend finance, I think, is almost starting to become zero food prints.

Speaker 1: 34:35

core competency which is quite a step from chef and running running restaurants Definitely.

Speaker 2: 34:44

I mean, it's, you know, huge credit to my team. And in a lot of ways, though, you can also think about, like Jose Andres from World Central Kitchen, you know, transitioning from like chef restaurateur he still does that but to going out and kind of providing you know, disaster relief and feeding people at the site of the hurricane or whatever. And I heard him speak once and he kind of mentioned, like you know, the chef standing in the past is basically like getting a bunch of you know hot dishes from the cooks and he's got all the orders over here and he, he or she, you know, sort of like just managing resources in a time sensitive way and trying to optimize the outcomes, and so in a lot of ways, that's kind of what World Central Kitchen does.

Speaker 2: 35:28

In a lot of ways, that's kind of what we're doing at this point you know, getting the resources these happen to be financial and then trying to kind of urgently, kind of optimize the outcomes.

Speaker 1: 35:40

And I mean we do enjoy the process. This say, I mean it's a different outcome you're pushing for, but do you again, do you miss like looking at this, this policy piece, and going deep into county politics as well and how to shape that? Not that kitchens are without their politics, but do you miss that every now and then?

Speaker 2: 36:02

Yeah, I mean, like I said, I miss kind of the adrenaline and the rush of the service, let's say, but also like there's so much negativity out there that for me, the work on climate solutions and regenerative agriculture I'm going to paraphrase my wife here a little bit, but it's almost like a religion, you know where it gives my life meaning or purpose. You know I look forward to doing the work. If I was just serving a tasty thing to a rich person at this point, that might probably wouldn't be satisfying enough for me.

Speaker 1: 36:40

Understudents. What excites you in, let's say, your old world of the chef's base and the world of the restaurants, for somebody doesn't look at that too often, to be honest. I mean as a customer, every now and then, yes, but not too deep. What excites you in the restaurant space at the moment, from a climate, from a region perspective?

Speaker 2: 37:02

if you had to share something or point at something, so when we started, you know I don't know if you already know the story, but basically we we kind of inadvertently trailblazed the pop-up movement. So it was around the time that Twitter was just beginning we started a restaurant within a hole in the wall Chinese restaurant, and then it just kind of blew up. But it didn't blow up just only because the right place at the right time. That was part of it, because you know we kept doing event after event.

Speaker 2: 37:36

We started collaborating with other chefs and restaurants and as a guest chef so it could have been the line cook from some fancy restaurant was able to be the chef for a night and do half the menu. I did the other half the menu, etc. And so that's sort of like collaboration and sort of like the potential in the midst of kind of new circumstances like Twitter, new media, etc. So I think what's exciting to me is basically now you've got you know a TikTok chef, you know someone like Mr Beast with like millions of subscribers that had it every day. So there's never been sort of like more cultural capital and potential for something like completely transformative to happen.

Speaker 2: 38:20

However, I think that you know, almost every single chef I've talked to, except for the chefs who are part of Zero Food Print, are thinking about this transition in regenerative agriculture in terms of, like, how they can buy oh, I should support the farmer, I should buy differently. And then I think what we're proposing is different. It's like how can you just directly change farming? And so to me, what's exciting is trying to get this mechanism and this approach and this pathway in you know, integrated into this new opportunity in the entire restaurant industry and almost like the food economy at large.

Speaker 1: 38:56

Yeah, it's almost like they need to do both and. But potentially their biggest impact is fueling, not, not is not their buying, but is actually how they they might add one or a few percent and how they of course get their, their gas to be excited, et cetera. But just serving another amazingly randomly grown dish to a rich person is just not going to move the needle. But taking a bit of money and fueling and using their voice and using their local presence, et cetera, might trigger, or at least have a path towards trigger, policy change and thus a lot of hectares to be touched which will never serve that restaurant potentially, and so that's a mindset shift that's needed in that space.

Speaker 1: 39:40

How? Because it feels almost like a mindset shift has a bit already happened, at least on the sourcing in the soil, which always was part, I think, in the chef's base, but now somehow maybe because I'm talking to more chefs these days but has been much more prominent, like this whole region piece is seems very prominent in the sourcing and you're saying, yeah, but it needs to be a huge step beyond that, because just sourcing like you're not going to influence too many hectares with or too many acres with your even one or 10 restaurants, it's just very limited. Has that shifted, actually, that the region and soil is more part of the conversation, at least on the sourcing piece?

Speaker 2: 40:16

Oh yeah, I mean I think a lot of chefs on restaurants are starting to understand soil and regenerative ag. I've go to the chef conferences.

Speaker 2: 40:24

I'm on the board of the James Speard Foundation so that definitely is happening. But that's a sort of like collective economic action piece that's not even happening in the regenerative movement yet, if you think about it. And so what I mean by that is like you've got the good actor Alexander Derry, etc. Like people buying the good product and championing that and saying we should pay more for that. But there's zero sense from that purchase is going to the next practice, the next acre, but kind of we know almost like at the society level. If you imagine like there's a big wheat company. They work with 100 farmers. Each farmer has 100 acres, and so if two farmers kind of shifted their whole practice to be regenerative, great. But then that requires like small scale milling and processing and enough throughput at that kind of messy middle to support those enterprises. It requires consumers to separate it.

Speaker 2: 41:28

But for society in the world and climate. If 10 of those 100 farmers shifted 20 acres out of their 100, that would be the same as two of the farmers kind of like going direct to consumer and like getting out of the corporate extractive economy. And so I think that I think in renewables it's kind of called mass balance, so for those 10 farmers to change 20% of their field, now the whole company's wheat is 2% regenerative, let's say. But nobody would ever market like now, 2% regenerative wheat, 80% degenerative like that doesn't make sense Chemically sprayed, but you're fine towards that, so that wouldn't work.

Speaker 2: 42:13

But with renewable energy you know you pay the dollar and it's like actually improving energy production. And so to your point a second ago that you can do both, but that dollar is almost like the least we could do at this point. Every company that's sort of the goal behind that sort of like ordinance approach these counties, whole states, maybe the whole country should just should be sending 1% to transition acres and then if you kind of ladder that up to the macro, you know 1% that feels very small with that actually make a difference. I mean, first of all in the US you know that would be like $80 billion a year from the food economy, so definitely would make a difference. But in terms of climate overall. You know, I think when we were beginning the program with California and others, we kind of turned to the work of project drawdown and sort of analyzed.

Speaker 2: 43:01

You know, okay, there's all these different climate solutions. What would it take, you know, for society to solve climate? And if you kind of look at the table on the last page of the you know coffee table book, it would cost about 1% of GDP to lower temperatures. You know, between now and 2050, a trillion dollars a year is 1% of GDP. You know that. $30 trillion more or less enough, according to Project Drawdown. Others, like John Doar, think it's higher because of stranded assets and different things. You know, but at this point in the climate crisis, I think 1% is the least you should do, yeah and it feels Very little if you're paying something somewhere.

Speaker 1: 43:42

Very little if you're Opting every year, pushing people to to add it as an opt out, like it's. It's like who's gonna worry about 1% a year? Results show that most people don't and if you want to put that, that's perfectly fine and exactly and so in. Thank you definitely. Yeah, that's the. It's a fascinating piece on the system chains, which we don't cover so much here. You said on the, actually.

Speaker 1: 44:09

But coming back to drawdown, they've been pushing back a lot on on region act recently in, like you said, we looked at it when we started this work. Have you been following them recently and what do you? What do you think? I'm sorry about project right on, yeah, drawdown and their specific push. I think grazing they really don't support so much anymore or holistic managed grazing or the carbon side of things, and there's there seems to be quite an Anti-animal movement in there. I don't know what's been happening. I'm wondering about it. Um, but Not so not so sure of this relevant for this conversation. We're just interested if you because you said we started looking at that Are you still using their frameworks and updated frameworks, or what are you relying on now?

Speaker 2: 44:56

Yeah for sure. Well, I mean so. So what you're referring to with, like, beef and grazing, I most feel like that's a false binary. Um, that is occurring so with project drawdown. You know their own kind of page on regenerative grazing or managed grazing Shows. Like you know, if society implemented this, it could sequester you know many billions of tons of carbon. The kind of ROI for society would be, like you know, 40 $50 of benefit per dollar of investment. You know, huge win for the planet and industries and farmers and land managers. I Think what you're referring to, though, is this idea that, like, there's almost the fear of sort of like giving the beef industry a pass or something, and so a lot of people don't understand that you know, in the US.

Speaker 2: 45:46

I'll kind of at least refer to how the US production system works. My understanding is that you know there's 760 million acres of cow calf operations where there's a rancher managing land with, you know, the cow and calves. They're out there for a year, let's say, and then at that point the cow, the calf is big enough to go into the feedlot. So we maybe don't like what's going on in the feedlot. You know the manure lagoons and bad animal welfare and resource intensive feed. But that's 760 million acres on year one. That's just a rancher out there with a cow and so whether the cow goes into the chemical feedlot or whatever or not, you could still improve that land management. You know 1% from every McDonald's burger or whatever could just go.

Speaker 1: 46:31

Is that massive?

Speaker 2: 46:33

Even if it was still a feedlot cow. And so that's why I think it's a false binary where, like you know, some folks at Droughtown or just in general are sort of like oh you know, we don't want to, you know, start to give the beef industry an out. But the beef industry is like Thousands and thousands of ranchers managing land that used to have bison on it, you know, and now there's no bison and so that it's an under a misunderstanding of kind of range, land, agroecology and the potential benefit, and then trying to lump the land management together with the end product of the beef. And so I think that our work is trying to Decouple those things and just say we can improve the land Even if we don't have like a direct-to-consumer regenerative whole animal butry beef program in every McDonald's, because that's not plausible.

Speaker 1: 47:23

And I think there's a lot of science coming out now, especially On Peter Bix group and others, that show that impact on biodiversity, on Burr, I mean birds are part of insects, birds carbon and Farmers welfare in terms of financial welfare when they transition and a lot of the transition seems to be Almost triggered, knowing they. They compare two different, they've compared five different pairs of farms but why the neighbors weren't transitioning if the other one, if their neighbor Basically has been in managed grazing or m grazing or whatever we want to call it, and and a lot of it was not too much to do with money, it actually to do with not asking the other one, because they could see the grass, they could see the guys were better and then when they were sitting on the porch together and starting to share numbers, suddenly. So there's, there's some interesting dynamics going on there, but I think it's a very interesting point. Whatever you think of the KFO piece, which is horrendous, the piece before that is is Easy, between brackets, to fix like it's. It's a rancher that needs to change management and we've seen that Thousands of times happening before and it doesn't need a lot of new technology. It may be need some watering, maybe some fencing and some other things and a bit of money and and some training and it. The effect is Almost immediate, if not in a year, and that's a lot of acreage like that's. That's a massive amount of improvement that we can. We can see in a few months, if we wanted to, with a percent or even less in this case, probably to trigger that. So that's a big trigger point.

Speaker 1: 48:57

What else do you see like, I think, the industry, that the Restaurant industry and the food industry in general. But you also talk to investors. You also took to funders. What do they? What would be the main message? If we do this in a nice theater, let's say in California, we do is live on stage, or in Denver, and and we, we have this discussion on systems change and and we need to think differently and bigger at the same time, and what would be the main seed or the main message you would like to plant in their head? Of course, they're gonna be excited about this after, but if we, we know people forget things, so we want them the next morning to remember one thing, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 49:36

Well, how about two things? So one is that I Love it.

Speaker 1: 49:39

I'll always go for one, like I give them a question and people go over yeah, let me do two, okay. Okay, you can get to like what would be two things, but there's the chance. I only remember one, so make sure you pick wisely.

Speaker 2: 49:51

Okay. So the one we've already covered, in a way that that you can frictionlessly direct money to the change, that you could circumvent the whole messy middle, you could circumvent the product. All that is kind of like retroactive Work. You're trying to like kind of retroactively get a premium, and I think what we're trying to suggest is that you could proactively just direct money to the change. So that kind of like timing and etc. Kind of almost thinking of the transition as a service Instead of a product orientation. But never mind that. We've discussed that a little bit.

Speaker 2: 50:29

The the one thing I would try to get investors to consider is to keep practice acres In mind as kind of like a top line stat. So let's say, a farmer is going to plant cover crops and apply compost on a hundred acres, that's 200 practice acres. And so the reason I'm unpacking this is to say, like you know, there's a lot of like mrv, it's complicated, it's expensive, do we know? Outcomes, this and that. But I think like, if you're gonna, if you're gonna, do a deal, you're gonna, you know, invest in infrastructure, you're going to buy a pretzel company, whatever.

Speaker 2: 51:03

How many practice acres? Let's say new practice acres? How many new practice acres occurred because of the investment. I'm going to put a million dollars into this investment and in theory that will. You know it's a regenerative agriculture investment because the pretzel company is going to buy from regenerative producers, but that created zero new practice acres. Or I'm going to put the million dollars in, you know it's going to create this small-scale milling infrastructure for the local wheat producers and and 20 producers have agreed to use 10 of every sale to get the next practice acre. You know that's going to generate 20,000 practice acres a year, etc. So I've never seen. You know. I've been in all these calls with a lot of investment groups trying to Get practice acres into the top line of the discussion and so that that would be my one takeaway if we're just talking about investment.

Speaker 1: 51:54

I think it's a fascinating. We talk a lot at tonic on the net impact of of your investment. Of course it's super difficult to calculate, but that's what we should thrive for and because otherwise you get stuck in the weeds of yeah, but every investment has a negative impact and every solar panel needs, needs, needs, resources and and all of that, which is all true, not saying it's not, but we have to look at the net one and and discuss like how big can you make that? And in this case, like, how many new acres? Like how many practice acres? How many new? Because the truth is, most acres are heavily degraded and they can not touched by any regenerative practices, even from a mile away.

Speaker 1: 52:31

Um, so how do you influence as many as as possible? I think is that it's very, very interesting, interesting one. And I would. No, you can. Actually, it doesn't matter if you invest in a food company. It doesn't matter if you invest in in the technology enabling company. If you invest directly in land, obviously that's a very direct one, but also a limiting one, because land is usually pretty expensive and limits a lot. I mean locks in a lot of money. Um, so that this is almost. Yeah, you're dancing between transition finance Directly, indirectly touching land, but I think it's uh. How has that been received from by investors? Have you seen people starting to use maybe another term, but you use this kind of thinking, or not yet?

Speaker 2: 53:14

Uh, I have not yet.

Speaker 2: 53:15

I, I have only started working on in the past, you know, a couple months, as I was starting to be kind of in the transition finance group and the funders over doing a bag and other groups.

Speaker 2: 53:25

Um, you know, I think a lot of uh, sophisticated investors like trailhead capital or others have, like they're looking at 50 metrics.

Speaker 2: 53:34

You know, I I'm not saying people aren't doing their due diligence or whatever for sure, not saying that, but just saying that to align everybody, you could pick at least one extremely simple one. You know, we may not agree on which carbon quantification model, we may not agree on the relative prioritization of carbon versus biodiversity, versus water, versus equity, but we can all agree whether a new practice acre occurred or not, and that we want that, like I think that's the one thing we all want, that and so that should just be in the top line. And it would be different for each industry. You know, maybe for tech, it's one you want to get, you know, a thousand practice acres per whatever. Maybe for ranching it's different from specialty crops, not saying that that's perfect and Universal, but that for each industry it should at least be. You know, I'm gonna make a 3% return, a 10% return and I'm gonna get 10,000 practice acres. That should be up there in the top line.

Speaker 1: 54:25

Yeah, new practice acres we need new.

Speaker 1: 54:27

Yes, I know additional additionality, very important, and if you, I mean to be conscious of time, because there's so many rabbit holes. But, um, you know, I like to ask a question inspired by John Kempf what do you believe to be true about Regented of agriculture, said others don't that others don't believe to be true, and we've Captured, or we we covered a few. But if you had to pick one, what would that be where you really, you really think different? Let's say then, then the rest of the bubble.

Speaker 2: 55:00

Well, now I regret trying to put two before, because this would be my one and it basically comes down to that timing element, which is that there's a lot of, you know, is it practices versus outcomes, is it? And I think that a lot of the movement in the industry? You know, if you're talking about an ingredient, a carbon credit, a product, then of course you want to track outcomes because you're you know, you want the integrity of the product that's embodied in the product or whatever. But if you think about if you're going to take a you know taxi ride, if you're going to take a you know taxi ride, if you're going to renovate your house or whatever, um, you form a plan, then you execute the plan to the best of your ability, let's say, and so society needs to change you know, billions of acres, hundreds of millions of acres, and so I don't think that we can take a retroactive product approach.

Speaker 2: 55:53

I think we have to form a plan and then start executing the plan. And so I think that that's complicated because a lot of the representatives in a Conference about investment and all these things, work in products, you know, they work in the investment side, whereas the change that fundamentally needs to occur, you know, is on the land management side. But it again to the previous discussion like a farmer can't just bear the entire burden. So then the question becomes like how do you create all those other Circumstances on the land to just change the land management side of the equation? And I don't think that those you know, the city council member, the, etc. They're never at the regenerative investment conference.

Speaker 1: 56:37

So how do we get City council members and others to At least have a basic? I mean not expecting that they're listening to this podcast or other Deep rabbit holes, but to get a basic understanding of ag to begin with because you mentioned most don't and to Understand biology maybe a bit, understand the, the issues, the huge challenges of farmers and lends to it, and we cannot burden them with this transition alone. I mean, they're a crucial part of it. But there's like how do we, or how have you been doing that education piece almost in in, not in the restaurant space, in the aurica space, not in the Consumer space, but in the policy space and in those in those offices? How do we make sure they have at least a basic understanding so we know what we talk about when we say a regenerative transition or something, a buzzword like that?

Speaker 2: 57:28

So that's a complicated question that I don't necessarily have an answer to.

Speaker 2: 57:32

I think that we're trying our best, but not, as it's kind of like non policy experts you know, I've probably had like 50 meetings with city council, county boards of supervisor, sustainability managers of all stripes, you know, in the past year and for everybody the challenge is kind of like a logistics and coordination problem.

Speaker 2: 57:54

Like you know, bureaucracy these regions are so big. How would you go into a budget meeting and request a budget? Where would you even begin? And so that's where you know our whole work in a lot of cases is trying to create that framework and almost like meet each circumstance where it's at, so that it's just five businesses, then 10 businesses, then there's an informal program in a region. Maybe it would be the equivalent of like the Green Business Program for that region, you know, etc. There's some programs in Petaluma County and Boulder cool Boulder, cool Petaluma kind of consumer marketing facing. But even in other cities like I relocated to Portland, oregon, a couple years ago and my daughter was looking through like the Sunnyside neighborhood newspaper, you know that shows up on our doorstep and we saw mention of something called the Portland Clean Energy Fund and so there's a 1% fee at large corporations with over a billion dollars in sales in Portland.

Speaker 2: 58:55

So that fee generates $120 million a year for renewable energy and then, recently, they started to use some of that for regenerative ag, and so it can happen anywhere, like there's many also in Oregon. You know you go to the grocery store, you buy a six pack of beer. There's a couple cents per can for recycling. I think a lot of people are familiar with that sort of program in California and so just those sorts of collective economic action programs are all over the place. You know, a dollar when you buy a tire. A dollar from each tire goes to the end of use, kind of sustainable tire disposal management that turns it into like the playground surface floor or whatever it is. But that kind of collective economic action can happen anywhere.

Speaker 1: 59:38

And so I think the kind of challenging side we need to learn about it in the region space. That's a big piece as well.

Speaker 2: 59:47

I think so I mean, I think that if more philanthropy, if more you know, change makers were working on local programs, things would happen very quickly. And then I'm excited because in California and Washington state there have recently been programs to on the waste management side to make composting mandatory. So California just had a big shift. You know the state will create 90 new compost facilities, so really really big changes happening. You know the diversion rate will go from 90% of organics going into landfill to only 25%. So really really big change. And then what's exciting too is that cities and counties have a role to play in that. So, like San Francisco, los Angeles. San Francisco needs to buy 40,000 tons of compost per year to make sure that somebody's buying compost. Los Angeles needs to buy 460,000 tons of compost per year. And so Zerif reprints sort of adapted some of our grant making work to become, like I said, almost like a government compliance.

Speaker 1: 1:00:48

So why do they need to buy that much? For their own use or because they're forced to?

Speaker 2: 1:00:54

It's article 12 of the regulation, so it's meant to be kind of a demand mechanism.

Speaker 2: 1:01:02

So as there starts to be like 5 million tons of compost, new compost per year, 9 million tons of new compost per year, who's going to buy it? And so the law included a provision that individual cities and counties must buy some of it per capita, just to ensure that somebody's buying some compost. And so then now we have contracts with 15 jurisdictions Probably next year it'll be another 20 or 50, but basically helping them buy the compost and get it onto the farms and ranches. And so the reason I bring up that complicated example is just to say, going back to solar, now you're starting to see different local policy pieces become part of that fund stack where maybe there's equip grants, maybe there's state of California grants. Now, even if San Francisco doesn't have a regenerative ag program, they have to buy 40,000 tons of compost. So now they're part of that fund stack.

Speaker 2: 1:01:57

And then the dairy, the farm could all essentially chip in. The consumer could chip in, the restaurant could chip in.

Speaker 1: 1:02:05

Yeah, it's fascinating and I would encourage people deep in Region Ag and not so deep in renewable energy to have a look at the deployment rate of solar recently, like it's absolutely off the chart and it's definitely an exponential technology with all the issues. I'm not saying solar panels and fields are a great thing. I'm not saying the waste is not going to be an issue. I'm not saying that. But the speed of that technology and the execution now of all the hard work of 30 plus years is really taking off, like the amount.

Speaker 1: 1:02:36

You should have a look at some of the calculations, some of the predictions they've done over the last 10 years and how they were off by a factor, something constantly even the most respected researchers, for good reasons, are constantly underestimating the rate of change, which is fascinating. We don't see it that often. We don't, unless you're deep in that space. But just look at some of the numbers of solar growth over the last two or three years, even Like that's been a massive one. So you can see when you reach a certain tipping point things are starting to stack up and starting to go really fast and way faster than we might imagine, and so this sort of naturally go ahead.

Speaker 2: 1:03:17

Let me jump in though quick and say couldn't agree more. But so we've been talking about a program where, like you use a dollar per month to improve the grid, let's say, or you create blended finance, so homeowners want to put the solar panel on their roof, so that's like an energy production program, let's say. And then there's also in renewables, a lot of work on energy consumption, right, efficient, you know, homes, the heat pump, the Tesla or electric vehicle or whatever. But in regenerative ag, I think almost all the energy is around the consumption side, so it's the regenerative ingredient, etc. It's less about the changing farm production side.

Speaker 1: 1:04:00

Right. So do you think that it depends on the conference? Probably, it seems almost two different worlds, like if the farmer conference, where it's only about practices, and then you have the investor conference, I mean we search other or just message the other, but RFCI, not last year, but the one before 2022. And there it's. I mean there are farmers on stage and there's a huge effort to do that, but it is mostly off farm discussions, let's say. And those two worlds, and then the policy has their own conversations somewhere else about climate and policy, etc. So those three worlds just never, or hardly ever, meet.

Speaker 2: 1:04:35

But having the farmer, and again I'm I'm all in on the farmer, but having the farmer is like having the homeowner who has already made the switch and now they have the solar panels.

Speaker 1: 1:04:46

So you need a neighbor inspiring story, etc.

Speaker 2: 1:04:50

How they did it, how they were able to make it work. But how do you create the program that created the circumstances that you know helped that one farmer make the switch? All the farmers who are with us at RFCI and all these things are the good actors who have, just you know, wielded into being somehow, whether it's the farmer or because it's the right thing to do.

Speaker 2: 1:05:12

But the discussion isn't you know how do we just generate millions of dollars? You know you wouldn't have like. I think the discussion that needs to happen is at the C 40, you know the like sustainability directors from 50 cities have their conference. Somebody needs to be there telling the success story of like well, we implemented a regenerative ag program. You know blah, blah, blah, and according to the scientists, that's helped. You know, cool the region by three degrees by holding all the water and the evapotranspiration and all the different things you know that will. That's the part that needs to happen to like, scale the resources. But I think all the current discussion is just trying to move the farm bill instead of, like, the local government opportunity.

Speaker 1: 1:05:59

Yeah, and the chances of a farm bill or the cap in Europe to move are small, let's say because the the push is so strong from other sides to keep it this way or even increase certain funding for certain things. But on a local level it's much more adaptable. That's what you're saying.

Speaker 2: 1:06:21

Yeah, I'm really excited Behind the scenes. We've been in a lot of discussions with Boulder County and they are about to roll out a $1 million year Healthy Soils Initiative, and so that to me that's the biggest local regenerative ag program of its kind. It the money will come from the tax base, so they have a quarter percent sales tax for climate and so, you know, local advocates were able to get some of that budget towards regenerative ag. But I think what we're suggesting is like great. You know, if you have the tax base, you could start a regenerative ag program, and if you don't, we'll help you create a funding mechanism.

Speaker 1: 1:07:04

And it's not an actual bridge, but I'm still going to ask it If you had a magic wand and could change one thing overnight, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 1:07:17

Well, so I mean I think we've already talked about it, but to me the magic wand would just be that everybody started to embrace the collective action approaches that are working in renewable energy, recycling everything, and then just apply those. So let's begin collective regeneration.

Speaker 1: 1:07:38

Which I think is a very good one, but I still want to ask a few more questions. A very good one to ask, but I still want to ask the one billion dollar question which we always like to ask is what if you had and is on the investment piece so it might be we've had hurt. People definitely give answers like I would spend X on lobby or policy work. So there's, that could be. It could be part of a portfolio approach, let's put it that way. But if you had a billion dollars to put to work, how would you approach it? What would you do? I know you thought about it. I'm very curious about your answer.

Speaker 2: 1:08:12

Yeah, well, so the simple version of it. First I'll say I'm not an investor etc. But in the spirit of the question I would invest in compost infrastructure. So someone on our board is named John Wick who was co-founder of the marine carbon project and some of the biofunded personally kind of funded some of the biogeochemistry research showing that compost application on rangeland created heavy fraction and occluded carbon gains. So the scientist, someone named Wendy Silver I heard her speak once and she kind of said imagine if you had a cup of water and you threw it into a pool and then you asked me the scientist, like hey, go find those molecules from that cup.

Speaker 2: 1:08:56

We couldn't do that before, now we can do that. So they treat the soil with all kinds of like alkaline and acids and break it down. And then now they can say, oh okay, so this process created long-term carbon. So again, the scientific community can't even agree on like healthy soil makes healthy food, makes healthy people. So it might take decades or years, but that crucial discovery has been made and what they've it was sort of through this research on compost application on rangeland, because that was kind of like new and additional. The rancher would have no reason to do that. But it's non-tilled land. So you apply the compost. You can see over time this accumulation of long-term carbon, and I think I've seen these charts where it's like the molecules from the carbon are going down over time and then the sort of like increased biological activity of the soil. You know that jumpstart from one compost application is creating like a biological increase, like a new equilibrium of restoration, I guess you could call it. So you could start to think like so in the US there's 760 million acres of rangeland, just let's make it reductive, and you could think of that as like one big grid, like the energy grid. I mean, it's almost like an actual physical grid and you're trying to ramp up the photosynthetic ability to regenerate and you could do that by applying compost.

Speaker 2: 1:10:23

And so then each you know compost facility, especially like localized, decentralized compost, getting something out of landfill and turning it into this resource. That's like the little community solar farm. And so if you're asking me, you know, what would you do with a billion dollars Just as an investment? I would invest in decentralized composting. And then there's also this research from David Johnson and Huijin Sioux at New Mexico State, kind of around fungal dominant compost, and I've been in some discussions with a company in Colorado that's doing investments in medium scale fungal dominant compost and they're just getting amazing results. This local technical service provider, I think the I'm going to quote a study in a not 100% sure, but I think they said that.

Speaker 2: 1:11:12

So, first of all, with compost there's challenges because it's it's heavy. So if you've got compost at a facility you're trucking it out to the farm or the ranch. You know that trucking cost is a big part of the overall, like project cost. But with the fungal dominant compost what they were finding is that, you know, rather than take like five tons an acre, they were applying two pounds of kind of the extract from the fungal dominant compost and putting it into the irrigation system for conventional corn, you know. So 20 gallons of water, two pounds of compost extract and that replaced 140 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer and got 93% yield. So it was like cost positive in year one, you know, etc. Again, maybe five, 10 years from now. This is, you know, bear and sangento will just be selling this and doing it. But that's what I would invest in is like that kind of you know, wide scale shift in organic fertilization through compost and others.

Speaker 1: 1:12:10

Fascinating answer. Didn't expect both of them at the composite compost extract, but makes a lot of sense. I mean, the input space is ripe for disruption, let's say, and there's so much low hanging fruit and so much possible and so much research coming out now and being done now to show the potential, to show what can be done with relatively air quotes, easy, easy measures. None of this is easy, but still it's a massive shift. So with that, I want to be conscious of your time, wrap up and thank you so much for this journey of different rabbit holes, from sheffing to systems change and all the way down to compost. And go all the way down.

Speaker 1: 1:12:56

That's another. By no means this is an hierarchy of the conversation, but all the way to compost and compost extract. So thank you so much for this journey, for what the work you do, obviously, and having this extremely interesting, but also I can't imagine they're always fun policy discussions and frameworks, but somebody has to do it and somebody has to show up to see 40 meeting to talk about regenerative agriculture and my hunch is it's you or one of your team. So thank you for that and thank you for coming here to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 1:13:26

Cool. Thank you for entertaining all the rabbit holes and the great conversation and, of course, your work on getting to the heart of the matter, of what's going to move the needle on regenerative.

Speaker 1: 1:13:37

Thank you so much for listening all the way to the end. For the show notes and links we discussed in this episode, check out our website investing in regenerative agriculturecom forward slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? Or give us a rating on Apple podcasts? That really helps. Thanks again and see you next time.