90 Ed Byrne, if regen food doesn't taste amazing and doesn’t make money it won't go anywhere

A conversation about scale and business and the key role of decentralised processing in regenerative agriculture with Ed Byrne, co-founder of Soil Works. He has launched an investment firm first investing its own money into accelerating regenerative farming.

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Listen to the conversation between Ed Byrne and Koen van Seijen also about the importance of taste to make a profit and its impact on consumers.

Other topics: decentralized processing, quality over quantity and the importante of taste.

More about this episode on:
https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2020/08/25/ed-byrne.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

A conversation about scale and business and the key role of decentralized processing in regenerative agriculture. Our guest has launched an investment firm, first investing their own capital into accelerating regenerative farming. If the food grown with regenerative practices doesn't taste amazing and if it doesn't make more money, we will never reach the impact we need. Welcome to another episode of In March last year, we launched our membership community to make it easy for fans to support our work. And so many of you have joined as a member. We've launched different types of benefits, exclusive content, Q&A webinars with former guests, Ask Me Anything sessions, plus so much more to come in the future. For more information on the different tiers, benefits and how to become a member, check gumroad.com slash investingbridge.com. an egg or find the link below thank you Welcome to another episode today with Ed Byrne of Soilworks Natural Capital. It's a public benefit company on a mission to accelerate the regenerative food movement by helping to launch scalable, repeatable businesses that fuel the regenerative economy. Welcome, Ed. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. To start with a personal question. Why soil? What does an Irish man ends up in Texas working on regenerative agriculture?

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Well, that's a good question. I think, I don't know how far back you want me to go, but we, uh, when we, you know, my business partner, Lou and I, started looking we both have a passion for farming I can talk about that if you like but when we started looking at it and getting a bit more interested in should we do something here you know why is why is food quality getting worse even real food quality getting worse and you know why are westernized economies as they get more money why does the health go down and obesity go up and diabetes go up and we've kind of dug into the space you realize you know it's actually it's Michael Pollan's great line it's not why you eat it's what you eat eight and you dig a little bit deeper in there and I'm sure you've done this yourself you realize oh well is not just the quality of what they eat, it's how it's grown. And ultimately, it all boils back to the soil. If the soil is no good, the crops, the grains, the grass are not going to be any good. And it's logical when you think of it. It's just, you know, I probably had never gone quite there before. And when you realize, okay, it's all about the soil, and then, you know, you dig a little deeper and realize, oh, well, that UN stat of we have 65 harvests left, obviously, that's a big number to throw out there and not true in every part of the world. But it is quite scary how much topsoil we're eroding and how our practices are just making it worse and worse. And then when you dig in a little more and realize, oh, there's this regenerative agriculture thing. It's easier on the land. It's got less inputs for the farmers, so it should be a more profitable business. And it restores soil, takes carbon from the atmosphere and makes higher nutrient quality or nutrient dense food. And it's not mainstream. So kind of, you know, as you dig and dig and dig in, you realize this is a real opportunity and need. And is there something we can do here? And we looked around and talked to some farmers and we believe there is. And it's great that there's more and more people doing it. And hopefully we can be a little bit of help.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

And the analysis of the broken food system and obviously the potential of regenerative agriculture, many would share, but you didn't stop there. You went into action mode. But let's ask a question first. Do you still, was there one moment you suddenly saw the potential or was it more a gradual process?

SPEAKER_00 3:45

Yeah, I'd love to say there was a light bulb moment. But I think I've always, you know, I'm from Ireland, obviously, and I spend all my summers and holidays on family farms and my business partner or Lou has a ranch here. And so, you know, I always had an idea that at some point I'd run a farm, even if it was a hobby project or something in my retirement. And, you know, the more I started looking into it and Dan Barber's book, The Third Plate is just fascinating. As someone who likes food, forget farming, it's fascinating. And you look at, you know, I love the approach he takes, which is all about the quality and taste for consumers. And I actually, we can talk about that later, but I think that's really important. And I think that's what will drive this movement to a degree. And then Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma introduced me to Joel Salatin. I read Joel Salatin's and then Gabe Brown. And so I do think it was a gradual progression from an interest to a hobby to a, maybe there's a business here too. Oh, there's a whole ecosystem. And, you know, and even now I'm kind of semi-nervous going on a podcast because the more you dig, every time you look at one article, there's 10 more links and 10 more people and 10 more funds and 10 more companies. And so this space for better or for worse is much deeper than I thought, which is, you know, that's obviously better, but worse that so few people know about it. And there is, you know, it is such an active micro community, but it's not I mean, mainstream is not even close. I don't even know that it's on that path yet. I think that's where we need to work

SPEAKER_01 4:59

on. And because maybe many would have stopped there, started their own farm, maybe bring forward their retirement a bit and would do that and would stop at that and obviously maybe advocate for things, et cetera. But you decided to take a different approach, bringing a lot of your knowledge that you have in other spaces, mostly technology, to this space. Can you describe a bit that decision? Like you saw the opportunity and then didn't decide to create your own piece of paradise, but actually said, okay, this is something I'm working and spent a lot of my awake hours.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Yeah, there probably was a semi-lightbulb moment on that front. And, you know, obviously, I'd love to have a farm and I'm sure I will at some point. But we talked to a lot of farmers and they all said to us, you know, we need guys like you. We need business people in this space. We're great at making food. And I think, you know, farmers all go to farmers markets and sell direct. And I'm not sure that's necessarily what they all love to do. I think it's, you know, chefs are great at making food, but are they all great at running restaurants? And I think farmers, independent farmers have to do that. But I don't know what they choose to do if they're is a better route to market. And we just heard this, it's, you know, we need business people. And so when we look at the whole ecosystem, it's not just, I mean, there are lots of small farmers and there are more and more people moving to regenerative. And so me doing that will be a great hobby and hopefully I'll do it and I'll love it, but I'm a business person first. And I do see the opportunity and I'm passionate about it. And I think I'd like to think that Lou and I can bring what we've done in Scaleworks in the last five or six years and in our business careers, we can have an impact here. And look, we're business junkies. We love business. And if we can bring our love of business to a space where there's a real mission and we can see a real impact of regenerative agriculture succeeding, then we should. And can you describe a bit, what is Scaleworks? So we said Scaleworks, I mean, you can probably guess where the Soilworks name came from, very original. So we said Scaleworks up six years ago because in the software space, we saw that there was a lot of great product companies being built, being built by engineers and funded by VCs. And they had great products, but not great routes to market, not great scalable leadership teams, scalable sales and marketing. And I think a lot of times founders, especially engineer founders, they love building. And that's great. They love building. And then they get to a point and it's a rare founder who's good at building and scaling. And so in Scaleworks, we acquire as close to 100% of a company as we can, always a majority, or almost always a majority, and bring in a new leadership team, grow the team, focus on a scalable sales and marketing strategy. And so we've bought, God, I don't know, eight or 10 companies in the last five years, and thankfully it's gone well.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

And you were planning and are planning and are actually doing that, partly with the acquisition of FasterMap, that approach to regenerative agriculture.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, I don't know that that was our day one plan, but it worked out pretty well. It's a good bridge from the software world to the regenerative agriculture world by acquiring a software company. So we know the software space well. Lou was actually a user of FasterMap and he connected with the original founders. And we realized, look, this is a really small business, but we think FasterMap is a big opportunity. Not just in, you know, I mean, obviously rotational grazing and FasterMap management is a huge part of regenerative agriculture, but I feel like that's the kind of the entryway and, and, you know, having, you know, acres that we help farmers manage. Hopefully there's a lot more we can do over time as we work with those farmers and it got, look, we know how to do software. We were quickly able to build a software team around it and hopefully we can build out the platform, but hopefully it's a, that's the entryway for us to connect with farmers and figure out how we can do more on soil, more on carbon and, you know, generally, you know, build out our, our network and learnings there.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

And because, you acquired the full company of Passama and have changed the team as they were moving on. Otherwise, I think Passama would have closed and you were interested that that didn't happen. So what are you changing with them? What's the next phase in this case for a software company that you've bought completely?

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Well, yeah, we bought it completely. I hope it wouldn't have closed. I don't know. It wasn't a massively loss-making business. It's a small business, but it had a tiny team. So the founders have moved on. There was only, I think, really one other employee and She stayed with us and she's great and doing a phenomenal job and hopefully having lots of fun. So we've added four people to five people to the team since we bought it. And look, step one is, you know, the low hanging fruit. Talk to our customers. What's the stuff you're frustrated with? And that list is always long. And so we don't need to be business geniuses to pick up the low hanging fruit and fix the problems that people tell us they've had or they have. And then, look, you know, it's a privilege to have those conversations. And outside of hearing the kind of immediate things they have is ask what they're doing on their farm what else can we do to help and then you know ask what what are you can seed ideas would you like us to do more on on cover cropping you know can we help you manage that would you like to do more on soil metering do you have soil meters would you like to input your data in there you know can we figure out how much carbon is being removed into a soil and sell carbon credits I think there's just look there's lots to do in the short term which is just kind of stick to your knitting and and make make what we do really solid better and grow it you know and pasture map gets a ton of signups all the time, which is great. So it's our job to make sure that we work with all those, all those customers or potential customers and do a good job getting them on board and getting their pastures set up and then go from there. And look, the community already knows way, way more than we do. So it's our job to kind of listen and then prioritize, you know, the things you hear lots of times that we can actually do.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

So how would you describe Soilworks then as an entity or as a concept? How would you describe

SPEAKER_00 10:20

it? I guess it's, look, it's a, it's a, it's an investment entity or company Look, our mission is to accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture. And so we'll, within reason, anything we can add value in, we'll do. I think there's lots of funds and big funds emerging in this space, or at least big funds who are now adding agriculture and regenerative agriculture to their thesis. So I hope we're not just an investor of money, but if we can add value by acquiring a company like Powerhouse, master map and bringing our, you know, our expertise at running businesses to it. If we can start a company, I think we'll, I think we'll start one or two in the next year, somewhat in progress already. And if we can invest in some companies where, you know, we can bring a business community together and hopefully accelerate them. And I think, you know, the power of bringing a small network together could be great. So we'll, I think Solarworks is our kind of vehicle to do that. And hopefully we'll build a little bit of a brand and that'll attract, you know, smart people and we can, you know, start having good conversations.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

And So far, it's been funded by you and your business partner. Are there any plans to take on outside capital and to put other people's capital to work as well?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

I should probably have some disclaimers. We're not actually raising a fund now, but if we were, I guess we'd have to do that. So yeah, I think we will. I think we will. I mean, our capital is not limitless, obviously. You know, my gut right now is that we'll be, like Scaleworks, we'll always stay kind of boutique size where we can actually have an impact. But you never know. I mean, this space, I think, especially as farmers have to figure out how to migrate and transition, that could take a lot of money. So if the funds, if the other funds exist, great. I don't think, you know, we don't want to compete with anyone like just dollars in the bank, but yes, I think at some point we'll have to raise money and we'll figure out, will it be a fund or will it be a, you know, a company? And I don't know the answer to that yet, but I think we'll do something.

SPEAKER_01 12:11

Yeah. And I like to ask this prioritization question, which I always have to explain a bit using the ITN framework, which is importance, tractability, and connectiveness, which I always struggle with. You definitely inspire by the effective altruism community that uses it a lot I will put a link in the show notes below if you want to know more but it really looks at importance like what is the scale of the problem tractability how solvable is it and how many other people are working on it in a sense like how much of a difference can you make if you had to describe your approach to investing in and obviously being an entrepreneur in regenerative agriculture and food how would you rank it that like how would you basically why did you choose this approach if you would look at those those parts

SPEAKER_00 13:26

you know it's funny when you're thinking about importance go back to the macro there's no more important space i mean regenerative agriculture helps our climate and our food system and is there any two bigger problems we have right now than world health and nutrition obviously being such a big precursor to that and environmental change

SPEAKER_01 13:42

and you're approaching that in terms of bringing that business mind and the scalability or the repeatability as well to the regenerative space where we are now will that solve a lot of the issues that we are all having in terms of that still it's a super tiny sector and we're sort of fighting for attention everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Well, look, I actually think one of the, I won't say issues, but one of the neglected areas so far within the space is that the community is, you know, talks a lot about and is getting better and better at the practices of regenerative agriculture. But I'm a believer that supply follows demand. And right now, I think demand for regenerative produce is, you know, it might not be zero, but it's pretty low because consumers don't know what it is. And if you look at, you know, consumer awareness I mean, the big trend change is consumer awareness of the importance of nutrition and high quality food is growing and growing. Right. And, you know, you look at just the growth of organic and as we all know, organic isn't necessarily great for the environment or, you know, might be better than the opposite method, but still not perfect. And so it's

SPEAKER_01 14:44

a good start.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

It's a start. Yeah, I think.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

And in terms of consumer awareness, everybody knows organic. They've done a really good job. We've all done a good job in that.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

And I think I think if we could get regenerative produce or whatever it becomes called to that level of awareness, then supply will follow demand. More and more farmers will do it. More and more farmers will migrate. So

SPEAKER_01 15:03

what are your plans there? Because you mentioned we're going to start one or two companies. I'm guessing now that they're going to be in the food space.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

I don't know. I have some. I'm not going to share yet. Next podcast. But I don't want to jinx us. Maybe we'll support companies in the consumer space. Have you seen

SPEAKER_01 15:18

some in the food as medicine, the nutrient density? Because it's such a complex story. I see a lot of opportunity there. I absolutely believe that the key to getting consumer demand is going to be nutrient density, healthcare, etc. I haven't seen too many examples yet. Definitely reach out to anybody listening that has them. But food companies that are built around healthy soils, just very simply. Have you seen some little examples yet? Are we getting there? No, I wish we were. I

SPEAKER_00 15:44

think this is just such a small space. I mean, look, the farmer's market is an example.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

Of course. So there you don't know, unless you have the bionutrient meter, then Kittredge, which isn't ready yet because there's no database around. You cannot really see, okay, which tomato has being grown in healthy soils.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Exactly. And so, you know, you can go online to your local farmer, but look, the average consumer, even the average educated consumer about the importance of nutrition is not going to do that. And it's just, it's not easy to get, you know, regenerative produce. And then you've got to ask the question, I mean, again, within the regenerative space, is regenerative produce, is that what consumers want? I mean, will the consumer care that you're regenerating your land? I mean, it's great for the environment and the macro view of, you know, this food is good for, you know, it helps someone to sort their soil, but is it good for me? I mean, did this come from goods soil was just started regenerating a month ago. And so I don't know the answers to those, but I think until those questions are asked and we start, once we start getting regenerative produce in front of consumers, just like in the software world, they will tell us what works and what doesn't. And we can adapt on the fly. But, you know, when you talk, when I talk to a friend or colleague or family member about regenerative agriculture, they just, they gloss over it. No idea what that is. And, you know, the exciting part is when you explain it, everyone is fascinated by it. And then they start kind of their own cognitive bias of, oh, I still Oh, I recognize this. Is this, you know, was there a conference about this? Is this person speaking about it? But then someone says, you know, where can I get this food? And there's no answer to that yet. And so, or there's no good answer to it.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

So how would you approach that? I mean, you are now in soil works, obviously, but as nutrient density is so key and it's such a horrible word, what would be the steps there to fastly iterate minimal viable product, like bringing the software spirit and work ethics and approach to that? How would that look like if we applied it to nutrient density? Well,

SPEAKER_00 17:28

look, I kind of think of it as a pyramid of sorts. I think the top of the pyramid is taste. I think people don't want to have medicine. Medicine tastes horrible because if it tasted good, you wouldn't believe it would make you any better. And so I think number one is taste. By the way, real food should taste great. It should taste the best. This is why I think Dan Barber is such a good steward of this community because he goes straight to, I'm going to make the best food for consumers. And so regenerative produce, should be the most tasty food. It should also be the most nutrient dense. And so as a buyer for my family, not just a kind of restaurant goer, you look and say, well, if I'm in the store, I want something that's really nutrient dense and that the kids are going to like. And then I think the third part is, oh, this was carbon negative. Awesome. I feel great about this. I mean, I'm eating meat, which the world has been telling me is bad for me, but actually is really good for me. It's super nutrient dense. I mean, nothing more I can give my kids is so packed with nutrients. And it's... it's carbon negative. Wow, I feel awesome. And so I think there, that's the kind of, you know, step one, two, three, that I think, look, we'll see. We'll see what consumers react to. But, you know, you want to get out there and start getting them to react.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

I think that's the approach. Test, test, test and see, I mean, real people that put money on the table, either as customers of FasterMap or as consumers in a shop. I mean, that's the, often what goes wrong as well, like people develop things in their silo somewhere and the world needs you, idea, but then you get out and nobody cares about what you develop so getting that minimum viable and getting into real markets i think is key and what would you say like to smart i would say smart investors let's say they're all listening to this show you've made your first steps actually your first investments in this space what would you tell them obviously without giving investment advice all the disclaimers here are true yeah to look out for to look into in terms of regenerative agriculture as you've been going down the rabbit hole so

SPEAKER_00 19:24

uh it's a good question the caveat being that uh advising smart investors assumes that we're smart investors. And so the extra disclaimer that we might not be, and we're just getting started ourselves. So I think when you look, ag tech, especially in Silicon Valley is, oh, ag tech, we're investing in ag tech. And it's the last hundred years of ag tech and the industrialization of agriculture have been about getting more from less, scale, scale, scale, more from less, more chemicals for more produce. And I think it has to be the opposite of that. You know, it can't be more from less, you know, obviously we don't want less, but, all the ag tech we're doing now in software for precision agriculture. I just think it's the wrong way. It's just making us worse. And so what we need to do is ag tech, the investments in agriculture need to be on the process and innovation and methodology and logistical side. I mean, this whole ecosystem, if regenerative agriculture is going to succeed, really needs to be rebuilt. We need to go from massively centralized to massively decentralized. And so how do we change the regulations there to allow that? How do we support many small businesses? How do we build scalable logistics chains that are super decentralized? I think if there's one positive of the current world health crisis, it's that we've seen centralized food systems don't work. And so maybe that'll be an accelerator. And so, look, I would just say things that might not traditionally look like scalable software investments that are very attractive, I think investors need to look at what is the investment ecosystem we can do here? And it shouldn't just be more from less, which is what has got us into this problem to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

And I mean, this is a question that maybe is very relevant in a couple of years, but what if you be in charge of a$1 billion investment fund? How would you break that down and how would you, or maybe not, maybe put everything in one thing? What would you do with that starting today?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

I almost want to say that I wouldn't want that. I mean, I'm not convinced that big dollars make big change. I think, you know, we see that in the software world all the time. You know, the more money companies raise is definitely not a predictor of of their success. I mean, just look at the innovator's dilemma, right? I mean, small companies innovate big companies all the time. And so I actually think, you know, constraints are a great driver of innovation. I think, you know, outside of software, farmers are super constrained financially and by everything else. And look at how scrappy and innovative they are in making their farms work. And so if I have to have that much money to spend, I think, you know, you could put a lot of it into just how do you finance the transition and the migration. I know you're doing some work on this as it is. And so, you know, how do we give, you know, since the government isn't doing it yet, how do you help farmers move from regenerative or from conventional to regenerative? And then, look, you know, that's a big fun. So I draw the stack of what is the ecosystem in agriculture. And then I think within each, the current, you know, food system from farmer to consumer, every step along the way is likely to have to change or likely to change. And hopefully, you know, getting the farmer closer to the consumer. So outside of quality, the farmer makes more money. I think that, you know, and the consumer doesn't necessarily have to pay more, right? That'd be a nice win-win. And so I think you could look at each part of that ecosystem or that, you know, food system stack or agri-food system stack, and there's innovation going to happen in each area. And so, you know, if you had that much money, you could maybe have lots of little microphones and pour fuel on each area.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Is there something in all of the different stacks, like basically from farm to fork to plate at the end, something you find most most interesting or most exciting at the moment? Because obviously that could change in six months or two months, et cetera. Is there something, or you recently discovered that you didn't see or know? Because every, I agree, every little piece has to change. So it's also difficult to choose where to focus on and what to learn because they're so different from slottery to sending, to shipping, to processing, to growing. I mean, it's all different industry, basically, and all very complex. Is there something that caught your eye recently in one of those stacks that really excites you?

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Yeah, I mean, I think processing is a big area. I mean, you know, like centralized processing, it's semi-uneconomical or untenable really for farmers to compete because they can't get access to centralized processing plants, which means they can't get that economy of scale. They have to go to smaller local state producers who are vastly more expensive. So the meat's just more expensive, full stop, straight away, nothing to do with quality or anything else. And it's only sellable within state lines. And so I think decentralized processing, so many small plants and mobile processing right on farm you know so animals never have to even get into a into a truck which is you know one good for their quality of life and two the quality of meat is often you know predicted by the stress of an animal so less stress is going to be good from the top of the pyramid bit of taste and so you know while that's technically possible you want to be able to sell you know across day lines and lots of grocery stores will only take USDA inspected and so how and I don't know how innovation helps here because technically it's possible but how do we lobby or get the USDA to change their approach, that they'll allow inspections over camera or some other way of doing it, that they don't have to have a person in plant, which just makes the barrier to massively decentralized processing too high and too expensive.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, just to give a bit of background in many of these plants, especially the large centralized ones, obviously are closed right now or partly closed because of COVID because they turned it out to be a hotbed. And there always needs to be a USDA person on site when you slaughter. But of course, if you have a very small and mobile slaughter unit that travels from farm to farm, it just doesn't make any economic sense that there is a person there paid by the slaughterhouse to see every single animal. But still, you need that in terms of getting into the larger contracts and they need to be UCA approved. So there's this quadundrum basically that makes that technically possible, but practically not feasible yet. But of course, maybe in the current situation, there could be movement because with pressure, everything becomes fluid if it's a big enough of an issue.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Well, and of if you actually did get, you know, a massively decentralized processing or mobile processing units across the states or across the world, but say across the US, then the selling across state lines wouldn't really matter because, you know, every state produces enough meat anyway. So by and large, you'd be able to do it that way. So that's one interesting area, I think.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

And, okay, so we're taking away your$1 billion investment fund, which you didn't want in the first place, so that's okay. Yeah. But we give you a magic wand and a magic power to change one thing in, let's say, actually the larger agriculture industry, what would you do?

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Well, I mean, look, the easy answer is just ban all chemicals. Maybe give a three-year kind of approach, but ban all chemicals. But I think if I had a magic wand, I'd make all consumers know what regenerative light is right now and understand it. And then I think demand would drive supply.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

And they would start knocking on the door of anywhere where they buy their current food and start asking questions on soil health, et

SPEAKER_00 26:17

cetera. Yeah. And look, the other thing is, I mean, outside of the consumer, I think if I had a magic wand, you want on both sides, supply and demand, especially on investment side, to focus on quality, not quantity. I mean, I I said it before, I guess, but we've been 100 years of quantity. Does anyone really believe we have a quantity issue with the amount of food waste? I mean, we don't have a quantity issue. We have a quality issue. And I think every study says that we can make enough quality food with regenerative practices and that would solve so many problems. And so if every side of the stakeholder table from producer, supplier, and consumer realized quality matters, I think we wouldn't necessarily have to pay a lot more because that scale, I think we can make that work. And that would change the world massively.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And we keep coming back to scale. It's also a bit of a, I wouldn't say dirty word, but some people are scared of scale because you get, once we're scaling this regenerative agriculture movement, we lose some of the complexity, et cetera, et cetera. What would you say to that? To people that say it shouldn't scale, it should all be small scale, family run farms, and it should actually all be smaller.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I think that that can be scaled. I don't think it has to be big farms. I mean, look at Uber. Uber is a massive company, but they're, and it's super decentralized. All they are is a, or Airbnb or take any of these, they have a central purchasing platform that connects you or a central platform that connects the consumer to the supplier. In which case, sometimes it's me and I want to get a ride to the airport, but why can't we do that for farmers? Scale doesn't necessarily mean centralization, especially in the current world we live in where on my mobile phone, I can open up an app and I can order online or order from a farmer or have a central store that connects me to local farmers and they deliver the next day. I don't know what the solution should be, but I think I absolutely think we should have loads of small farms. I don't think big farms. I think big farms will always have a weird kind of dis-economy of scale will kick in at some point. And maybe this is my own passion because my family are small farmers and I'd like to be a farmer too, but I think we can. I'd love to see, I think 100 years ago, farmers were wealthy and now farmers go bankrupt at a scary rate. And so many farmers have off-farm jobs. I mean, what a joke. The most important thing for our health and world so we can eat. I mean, you know, regardless of the quality of food we have to eat and the people producing our food are treated so badly and make so little money. I mean, it's ridiculous. And so I think, yeah, I think we can, we can scale the logistics, which means we can have lots of small suppliers, right? So I do believe that decentralized farming can scale and regenerative from scale because you need less inputs. I mean, the wonderful thing about it is you don't need all the chemicals. So you can be a regenerative farmer at any size and hopefully hopefully make money because your input cost goes way down. Hopefully the quality of your output goes up. Maybe the volume goes up a little bit and maybe the price you get goes up either because of the quality or because you've removed so many parts of the, so many middlemen from the chain. So anyway, long answer, but I think this absolutely can scale, but it can scale by billions of suppliers.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

And I'd love to ask this question that is definitely inspired by John Kempf, but what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't? Could be the scale one, but could also be a completely different one. Like what do you believe to be that others in regenerative agriculture don't believe to be true?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

I feel like it's such a leap of overconfidence to say I'm not a regenerative producer myself. We've been in this space for maybe learning it for two or three years and saying that there's something that, I mean, every day you learn something new. So look, if I had to pick something, I'd say it is that business is not evil. Regenerative agriculture, it's great that, you know, there should be a fair price and that, you know, ethics of how we treat animals and farmers are there. But it has to be a business, right? This isn't a philanthropic project. Regenerative farmers have to make money. Consumers have to get high-quality food that they demand that they're prepared to pay for. And so, you know, I don't know if that's something that people debate or not, but if they do, then that's my one belief.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Oh, they definitely do. But is there a reason why you picked being a public benefit company and not a foundation or basically a non-profit?

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's even a question. I mean, like the question was, are we a company or a public benefit company? A public benefit company is a far-profit company that has a mission outside of just creating... wealth. A foundation or a philanthropy, they give away money. Giving away money, it'll help farmers move maybe, but how is that going to create sustainable long-term businesses? If we can't make money at this, we're not going to scale it. It's as simple as that. If consumers don't want it and love it, they're not going to buy it. If they do, more and more farmers are going to move to it. Then new people will get into it. Then other parts of the ecosystem will change. I think trying to make this an altruistic let's say, you know, don't worry about making money. We'll just make great stuff. We'll never work. You know, the best way to, I won't say beat, but the best way to force the food system to change outside of consumer demand is by business, right? I mean, there should be profit all the way along and farmers should make more money than they have ever before. And so I absolutely think this has to be driven by business.

SPEAKER_01 31:16

Which I think is a good answer to that question. It's something that definitely not, I mean, many would agree listening to this and some probably won't. So I think it's a really good answer to the question. And I want to thank you for your time. I think we covered a lot. I don't think it's the last time we talk because I think there's, as you're so, I wouldn't say fresh in this space, but new, at least to be public about this. I mean, you just bought PastureMap, you're revitalizing a lot of things. And from the sound of it, you're going to start one or two companies this year, which I'm very interested in. But whenever that is shareable and open, I would love to check in and see, because I'm super interested in the food as medicine or the tasty food side of things and the consumer side of things, because I think there's the key. to, it flips the question to, okay, if we all start asking for this on a large scale, farmers will change and the whole food system will change. And that's a very interesting insight. So thank you for

SPEAKER_00 32:05

that. I totally agree. Look forward to chatting again. Thanks very much again for having me on today.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

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