Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features 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. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
95 Greg Shewmaker, what is in our food? Why we can’t answer this fundamental question
We still can’t answer food’s most basic question: what is in it. Unless we can measure nutrient density on the farm, regen ag will never deliver its promise. These are some of the questions we tackle in this check in interview with Greg Shewmaker co-founder of Teak Origin. Last time we talked about that most food you buy in the supermarket has hardly any nutrients in it.
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This time we dive deeper into the differences and discover some very interesting data on organic vs non organic when looking at the nutrients at the farm gate, compared to the super market shelve.
More about this episode on: https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/2020/11/10/greg-schewmaker-2.
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Welcome to another episode of that we as investors big and small and consumers start paying much more attention to the dirt slash soil underneath our feet 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 investingbridgeandegg or find the link below. Thank you. Welcome to another interview. Today, a check-in interview with the co-founder of Teak Origin, a food data company, which enables businesses and consumers to answer critical questions about their food. When is the right time to harvest? What are the post-harvest conversion nutrient levels? Are we getting what we're paying for? And how can food be used as its own label? And much more. We interviewed Greg more than a year ago, and I'm very, very happy he's back. He's one of the most listened episodes we have, and I'm looking forward to check in with them and see where this whole nutrient density discussion has been going over the past year. So welcome back, Greg.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you very much. It's good to be back again.
SPEAKER_01:And to start with a short reminder for whoever listened to the episode last time or maybe didn't, and I will obviously link it below. What is Teak Origin?
SPEAKER_00:Essentially, what we're doing is we're building the world's most up-to-date reference for nutrition. And the reason why we're doing that is because until now, there really hasn't been a scalable or an easy way to measure the nutrient density in our food. Of course, in the past, you could always send food off to a laboratory to be analyzed and it would be expensive and it would take a lot of time. Of course, it destroys the food, but none of that information ever got aggregated. And so it would always be done for a specific client or a specific need, but we never got to see that information compiled and compared to one another. So essentially what we've been working on now for a number of years is we do the lab work that you would normally do in a lab, but then we translate that into the field so that a user, a non-technical user, whether it be on the farm or in a warehouse or in the back of a store, can basically take an instrument and scan an item of food and within a few seconds understand very accurately what the nutrient density of that particular food is.
SPEAKER_01:So basically, without me, let's say I'm working in the back of a big supermarket and a big pallet of apples comes in. Without me taking a slice of the apple, sending it to a lab, waiting for the result, et cetera, et cetera, what you're allowing me to do is that I have a small handheld device, scan a piece of or slice of the apple or whatever way that works. And because of the lab work you've done before, it gives me basically the context of the apple. It gives me where that apple lands in terms of nutrients. Is that a fair example?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great example. And I think it's really important to say that what we're doing differently, and we've only learned this the hard way because we didn't start it out this way, is we're doing the chemistry piece of that. And so we tried to sort of overcome the chemistry challenge of having to do the lab work. But what we quickly realized is that nowhere in the world, did it exist, you know, an accurate source of information. So even if you could take an image of that apple, or even if you could use some form of AI, the information that we were comparing it to was essentially garbage. And so we've had to go and do the chemistry and build this updated reference so that you can indeed do what you just described.
SPEAKER_01:And in that case, it's good enough that I just scanned the apple with a device and I'm not doing the chemistry part. How come you make it possible that I don't have to send this slice of the apple to the lab?
SPEAKER_00:So an apple is a good example. So we'll take an apple. And in the case of apples, we have to actually So we'll say gala apples and we'll identify, let's say, maybe there's 200 things inside of an apple that can be measured in terms of nutrients. But in reality, a handful of those things really matter. Sugars and moisture and vitamin C and malic acid. And in some cases, you know, it's fats or antioxidants and other foods, but it's never 300. It's usually eight to 20. We'll identify what those key nutrients are. Then we just go into our lab and we'll analyze hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of samples of gala apples in this particular example. Until we understand the chemistry as good as any other food lab does, we take that information and we translate it to data models. And there's two types of models. There is a classifier model that allows us to identify that this indeed is a gala apple without us having to tell an instrument or a user that it is. And then if we say, okay, hey, I know this is a gala apple, then the next type of model is a prediction model. Now that I know this is a gala apple, I'm going to go ahead and make a prediction of those individual nutrients that I've studied so diligently in the lab. And this instrument that we use, it's a handheld spectrometer. It's a multi-channel spectrometer, industrial grade. So it's not one of these, you know, some of these consumer devices that you see out there. And by the way, we don't make the device. It's an off-the-shelf instrument made by other instrument companies. It gives you about 93 to 98, depending on the situation, percent accuracy to what you would normally see in the lab. So that's great for nutrient density. You don't need to be at 100% for nutrient density because today we're at zero. So it's far better, exponentially better than what we have today. Now, what we wouldn't claim is we wouldn't want to look for allergens or pesticides or things like that because, hey, 93% isn't good enough in those cases. So this is why we're focused right now on nutritional density.
SPEAKER_01:And it basically tells you this apple is... So we identified what type of apple, what variety, and then it tells you compared to the others, it's... relatively full of nutrients or it's at its peak or its top, what does it tell you in that prediction model?
SPEAKER_00:It'll compare it to a standard. So when we build the models, we default to the USDA standard just because we're a US company. But in reality, you can compare it to any standard. So we've compared it to the French nutrition label standard, UK. Some companies have their own standards in terms of quality that we can compare it to. So essentially what you'll say is, hey, here's what we think is actually in this apple. And hey, here's what the standard, whatever standard that might be, says is supposed to be there. here's the difference. So it says there's supposed to be so many milligrams of vitamin C or this level of glucose or sucrose or this amount of moisture or antioxidants. And here's what's actually there. And it gives you the individual differences between those two things. And then it gives you an overall score. It says, hey, based on the levels of these nutrients, hey, we think that this gala apple is about 76% of what you expect to be inside of a gala apple, depending on that standard.
SPEAKER_01:And do you see like maybe in the back of the supermarket with this pallet of apples, a huge variety, like a huge difference in different apples of that same box or that same pallet or that same shipment. Is that important or is that relevant? Have you seen that in your work with supermarkets? Not really. So I don't have to scan a hundred.
SPEAKER_00:Nope. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You can scan, you know, 10 and, and that's a good point because, you know, you could scan one and the user will get a real time answer to say, okay, Hey, here's the nutrient density of this particular apple, which is interesting, but far more interesting is sort of how that apple then compares to all the other apples being scanned around the world. So the aggregated data is becoming much more interesting to retailers in that particular case than it is that individual apple. But that's right. You can scan one or you can scan 10. And that's, again, far more accurate than what you're doing today.
SPEAKER_01:And then the question is, where do those differences come from?
SPEAKER_00:Well, so that's the question that we need to answer. So phase one of T-Corrigin has been all about sort of establishing the baseline. So that baseline has been How accurate are the existing sources of information, meaning nutrition labels or retailer websites?
SPEAKER_01:And probably the answer is not very accurate. That's right. I think it was the title of the last interview. There are hardly any nutrients in your food left or something like that. Yeah, we of course went for a nice one, but it was more or less the conclusion of the interview.
SPEAKER_00:And then how well are, you know, major supermarkets, which of course is the primary way we mostly get our fresh foods, how well are they delivering nutrition and at what price? And then how does where something is produced determine nutrient density. So those are kind of the first things we wanted to look at, which we've been collecting now hundreds of thousands.
SPEAKER_01:And the freshness, if I remember correctly from that interview, saying that the faster moving supermarkets in general, but that was obviously before you were releasing a lot of data, like the fresher the fruit in this case and the vegetables, in many cases, the better the amount of the more amount of nutrients left because freshness is something that just goes away very, very quickly and the nutrients go with that.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah. One Once a food is harvested, it's essentially degrading. And so it's, you know, it's a race against time, essentially. And of course, how it's stored and how it's shipped, those things all have an impact on it. But ultimately, it's a race against time.
SPEAKER_01:And so the first phase has been, let's get to the update part. You've been very busy. I mean, if you look at the website, you're publishing the big database and research that we talked about last time, but it wasn't live yet when we were recording and also when we released it on comparing a lot of fruits and vegetables in US supermarkets, but also in France and Canada, if I'm Can you share a bit about that? Quite a big project and quite an ambitious one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so not Canada yet. So we're doing the top 18 supermarkets in the U.S. We just launched last month in the U.K. So we're doing all the supermarkets and online delivery services in the U.K. only because it's a smaller market. And then we've done a couple of special projects in France. And then we'll do Singapore. We were going to launch Singapore next month, but we decided to wait till after through the holidays and do that in January. And the reason why we're doing Singapore, the U.S. and U.K. is those are obviously interesting, what we'd call beachheads to enter into these regional markets. But more importantly, by choosing those three locations, we now will have a snapshot of produce from 90% of the countries where these foods are produced. So we'll have the most complete global picture of the top produce items in the world.
SPEAKER_01:And when you say we do that country or we do the top 18 supermarkets like in the US, what does it actually mean?
SPEAKER_00:So our teams every day just go out as you would as a shopper and we walk into all these different stores around the countries and we just buy these foods and we buy a minimum each time we go of 10 samples of each type of food at the different retailers. And then we bring them back in the era of COVID, you know, either to our homes and or a central office. And we use that instrument that you and I just talked about a few seconds ago to measure the nutrient density of all these foods. And then all that information gets combined on a daily and weekly basis. So we've started at the market level Hey, what's being delivered? Now, we then sort of aggregate all the information and then we go to retailers and we say, hey, here is the state of nutrition for your fruits and vegetables, but also the rest of the market. So your top competitors. And so here's how well you're doing against the market. Inevitably, they'll have questions like you just asked. Well, OK, well, why are some of these things happening? And then that leads to a follow on piece of work with that particular retailer or retailers to say, OK, well, now let's dig into your supply chain and figure out where this is breaking down faster than workspace. because we obviously don't.
SPEAKER_01:So that's the business model here. We talked about it last time as well. You might bring some bad news to some of these players, but also giving them the opportunity to, with you obviously, digging into their supply chain to start finding why their apples or their avocados are not at par with their top competitors.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly right. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:And how has been the response so far of supermarkets?
SPEAKER_00:I think overall, it's been very positive. I think people are keen to have this information. It's unique insights that they haven't been able to see before. There's kind of two things that, if you can say retailers have an emotional response, the two things that have evoked sort of the most emotional responses have been the comparison of nutrient density over price. That always gets everyone's attention because there's some surprises there. Like retailers, like maybe we talked about before, that aren't known for quality, if you will, or freshness, but are known for their price, they're actually delivering high levels of nutrition versus the competitors that are known to have higher quality products. So that's a surprise to a lot of people.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think we discussed that like Whole Foods versus the faster moving ones like Walmart or Aldi. That's right. As they sell fast, meaning their stuff is generally more fresh and thus holding more nutrients in showing in this research.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. Which
SPEAKER_01:is
SPEAKER_00:surprising. But it's also, I mean, I think the one thing that we've learned over this, I mean, on this whole journey, but certainly the last year with getting as much data as we've collected so far, is it's really complex. It's complicated. There are no really straightforward answers. So like we were just looking at blueberries the other day and we compared winter blueberries through the months of January and February in both the UK and the US. And most of those blueberries were from South America, as you'd imagine, because it's the season there, of course. So they're being shipped thousands of miles to the end market. And those blueberries were far more nutritious than summer blueberries were in the same markets, even though most of the blueberries were sort of locally were regionally sourced. So most of the blueberries in the U.S. were U.S. grown blueberries over the summer. In the U.K., they were either U.K. blueberries. And overall nutrition was quite a bit higher in the winter. And things like vitamin C, which are great, it's a great indicator of how something is surviving the supply chain journey, was almost 2x. Wow. So things like that are just sort of counterintuitive that we never expect to see. And so anyway, to your question, these things are really interesting to the retailers.
SPEAKER_01:And then when you start digging, what do you find? Are there different types, different ways of growing them? Because yeah, you expect the long distance to destroy most of the nutrients. In this case, it's not happening.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So what we saw in that one example, blueberries, they were leaving the farms, if you will, in Chile with higher levels of nutrients to begin with. And because they are in the business of exporting 100% of their products to far points in the world, they had an extremely efficient supply chain. So they were just getting to the end markets efficiently and quickly.
SPEAKER_01:So
SPEAKER_00:that just seemed like that was partly the reason. Whereas in the case of the US, they were other modes of transportation so maybe it wasn't air or you know fast ship it was trucking they'd be stored you know extra time it would go from small farm to consolidator consolidator to major warehouse for big retailers and then that major warehouse to more stores so there were just more touch points for whatever reason and locally produced things but then you look at something else and you know it's completely different
SPEAKER_01:and of course for large supermarkets who are carrying so many different items it's a never-ending story but a very interesting one
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:And we touched upon it last time, and I don't know if you've made, I mean, it's been a crazy year, obviously, the connection to, which obviously we discussed a lot on this podcast, to soil health, soil management, or the farming side of things. Have you made any steps there in going all the way down through the supply chain to see, okay, why maybe these blueberries left with a higher level of nutrients to begin with, or on the apple side of things or the avocado side of things, have you been looking into the soil side of things at all? Or is that something that's on the agenda for the coming years?
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's part of the next phase is now how do production methods, shipping and storage methods, how do they influence nutrient density and the degradation of nutrition? But we do have a lot more information and insights than we had the last time we talked. So this summer, we had a chance to study organic strawberries from Vermont farms here in New England, where we're located. And it was interesting because on average, I'll speak in general terms to save time, those organic strawberries were 100% more nutritious than what was expected to be there. So data that we've seen from other strawberries and or the nutrition label, that was twice as much of the key nutrients were present. In the case of the French tomatoes that we've recently looked at over the summer and in some cases, U.S. tomatoes in biologic and organic equivalent, they were on average about 80% more nutritious right off the farm than what you'd expect to be there. And then just in the last few days, because it's still apple season, again, in both France and the US, we've seen apples that are 422% right off the farm, more nutritious than expectations. So what you would expect on the label.
SPEAKER_01:And those expectations, are they based on organic apples or that's the general US or France label? Okay, this is what this type of apple should be because we've done some lab work a long time ago. Yep, just the general. So basically the basic models, like the labels are, like what we expect is generally quite far off. Is that a conclusion we can draw?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it is, but then what's then sort of discouraging or what we have to dig into now with both ourselves as a company, but also now our retail partners, is that when you look at those same foods, now, of course, it's not the same food, meaning from the same supplier, you know, the same actual pieces of fruit, but the same type of foods, strawberries, tomatoes, and apples in the supermarket. So when you look at organic from the major supermarkets, we see almost no differences between conventional and organic. So by the time it's gone through these big supply chains, they've sort of been equalized for whatever reason. And I can't tell you why today.
SPEAKER_01:Because what you were mentioning before was a farm. So on the farm, actually immediately like harvested tomato, harvested apple and measured there. And you're saying when it gets to your organic supermarket or the organic aisle in your supermarket, most of the of the difference, like the 420% difference or all the other is basically has disappeared. And we don't know why yet, which is a crucial question because you're producing more nutrients as a farmer and those nutrients never get to the plate.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. So you're not getting credit for doing this great work of producing these foods. Some of that's natural. I mean, so obviously nutrients degrade over time once it leaves the bush or the tree or the farm. But obviously it's degrading in some cases at much faster rates than it should be. And so... Sort of that's the next holy grail moment of figuring out why and where and then being able to fix that.
SPEAKER_01:And yeah, unless we go and harvest ourselves and eat it straight of the tree or the plant, which won't happen anytime soon, we need to figure out how to get those nutrients to our doorsteps.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. And what's interesting is, and this isn't organic or regenerative practices, but something else we discovered in the last few months around avocados, because you had mentioned avocados.
SPEAKER_01:Just because I saw them on your website, not because they are always on my mind, but
SPEAKER_00:yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, but they're all the rage now, right? I mean, hey, it's a healthy food and you see them everywhere now. Everyone's talking about avocados and how hard they are to get and how expensive they are. So over the last few years, as fat has no longer been sort of enemy number one and people have started to eat healthy fats, of course, we've been producing avocados to have more of those unsaturated fatty acids in them and it's worked. So we're seeing much, much higher levels of healthy fats inside of avocados than the previous lab work was done 20 years ago. So that's good news. But the unintended consequences of that are that the calorie count in avocados now is more than 2x.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, wait. Basically, you're saying that it's great because we get more of the good fat. The reason why we eat avocados, whether in all the nutrient books and the diets, etc., is there's much more. We've been growing avocados for more of those fats, which is great. But obviously, the amount of calories that we count in avocado, too, if you're been based on like 20 year old research and that's also completely off
SPEAKER_00:completely so if you're using a nutrition app or you're googling how many calories are avocado or you're using a retailer website or the nutrition label you're saying okay well hey i'm gonna eat this avocado on my toast and i get 300 calories great in reality you're probably getting close to 700 calories for that medium-sized avocado and so again not saying don't eat avocados but these are things that need to be updated and we need to know these things to factor into what we're actually putting into our bodies
SPEAKER_01:because that's a massive I mean, you could be doing your perfect diet, you think, because you're tracking it in your app, etc. And actually you're eating, you're getting more than 2x the amount of calories in, which obviously ruins your calorie count, if you would be counting your calories.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's right. Even if you're not counting calories, if you ate two avocados in a day and got 1400 calories, I mean, we can only consume so many calories, even if you're not conscious of it. So
SPEAKER_01:yeah,
SPEAKER_00:that's a big deal.
SPEAKER_01:It's a big deal. And that's only the avocado, which is all the rage, but still, I mean, not our staple food. Imagine others that are way more consumed and potentially also quite off in terms of nutrients, but also in terms of calories.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. Sometimes we'll talk to folks in the academic world or nutritionists. We have a nutritionist on staff and we'll talk about vitamin C in apples a lot. And they'll always look at us and say, well, no one measures vitamin C in apples. We don't think about vitamin C when we think about apples. But the reality is, in some cases, we'll see apples, like the example I just shared a couple of minutes ago, that'll have more vitamin C in them than fruits like strawberries or citrus that we're eating specifically for vitamin C. So it's these old ways of thinking, this old mentality we got to get out of.
SPEAKER_01:And what has surprised you the most over this year of releasing and also doing a lot of this, releasing a lot of this data and doing a lot of this study? What's been the biggest, not aha moment, but the weirdest thing that came up?
SPEAKER_00:I think some of these examples that I just shared with you, but I think the most revealing is just how complicated this really is. You kind of hope going into this, well, hey, one, it's going to work. And then two, hey, we're going to identify something that is a clear path to solving it hey we're just going to if you produce it differently if you produce it in this region or in this method or we go back to seasonal or hey if you just change the way something was stored or the way something was shipped or if we can sell it faster and the reality is it's messy and it's always a combination of all these different things and it's slightly different for each food and maybe even each harvest and so that's the next level is okay well now how do we go fix that together I think we talked about this sort of in theory the last time we got together of, hey, nothing leaves the farm at 100%. And the whole entire supply chain is built around the fact that food leaves a harvest site at 100% and then you do some math and it degrades from there. But it leaves at 10% of what should be there or sometimes it leaves at 700% of what should be there. And so I think that is going to become more and more important to be able to establish that baseline effectively, efficiently on the farm because then it drives every other decision from that point forward
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it even drives it. I mean, it starts to drive potential price decisions as soon as your clients and others are starting to say, yeah, but actually I am supposed to paying for apples to reach this level. And I now can tell that it didn't, or at least when they arrived here, they were basically empty and basically water and sugar. As we discussed last time, I'm still scared. That interview was really changed my image on apples and spinach and some other things. But as a supermarket, I'm paying for certain things and I'm not getting it. And as a farmer, that relationship changes completely, but you're going to ask a lot of questions as soon as you can do that measurement, both on farm, during the transport, and also at the arrival, basically at the back of the supermarket or at a huge warehouse.
SPEAKER_00:100%. That's absolutely right. I think one of the things that's been interesting to see is a lot of retailers are worried about sharing this information with their customers, and rightfully so. And we have been as well, because the last thing we want to do is send a message and say, hey, stop eating avocados or don't eat bananas or whatever. We don't want that to be the message. It's more about, hey, this is what you're actually getting. And so, hey, maybe you need to try different fruits at different times or eat more of this or less of that or whatever. So it's more just about having a much more detailed understanding of what we're actually consuming. But I think what the retailers sort of underestimated was that customers liked that. They liked that empowerment. So I won't say the name of it, but a retailer that isn't known for really delivering transparency and looking out for the nutrient density of their customers necessarily, learned very quickly that, hey, just by being open and giving our consumers the ability to make their own decisions, hey, this apple is the best for pie baking. Hey, it may not be the most nutritious, but this might serve the purpose if that's what you're coming for. Or, hey, this might be the best apple to put in your child's lunch, or this might just be the best overall value. Giving the consumer credit for that and letting them make that decision raised the level of trust in that particular retailer and And ultimately, I think we'll have a positive impact on their business. So I was really telling for them and it was really telling for us that that indeed worked. They didn't run away and say, oh, well, now that you're being truthful, I don't want to deal with you anymore.
SPEAKER_01:No, and also because if somebody else does it, if one of their top 17 competitors does it and they don't and people shop at different places, if they can, they will start asking questions because you probably want to at least know. But it's encouraging to see that consumers, at least even if it ends up being a relatively empty apple, They appreciate the openness. And in terms of this has all been fresh produce, et cetera, have you done any work? I don't know that. Or are you planning any work on the processed food side? Like as soon as it stops being an apple and turns into something else before we buy it, is that an area of interest? I can imagine incredibly complex, but is that an area of interest for tick origin?
SPEAKER_00:Eventually, yes. So I think kind of the way it works, at least in our minds from a scientific standpoint, is once we develop all these models, for the main fresh foods, then that gives us a high degree of confidence and accuracy to then to go look at processed foods that are made up of a combination of these fresh foods. But until you understand the individual components of an apple, and then you understand apples, and then apples go into applesauce, et cetera, et cetera, it's really impossible to get a high degree of accuracy by looking at mixed foods. Now, you can do it in the lab, of course. You can prepare samples and do all kinds of removing the moisture and things like that. But from a field interrogation standpoint point. We're not there yet, but that is absolutely on our radar screen. And we think that we'll be able to do that someday or somebody will.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, it sounds extremely important, especially as there's a lot of discussion, obviously, on processed food in general and how the processing, of course, depends on the levels, et cetera. That could be one of the reasons why there's so few nutrients left, but obviously until you measure it and until you know the different pieces, it just doesn't make too much sense to actually say to things which obviously are shared widely to switch gears a bit I've been asking this question a number of times but I'm pretty sure not when you and when we were interviewing a year ago so I've been experimenting with using the ITN framework which is used extensively in effective altruism which stands for importance tractability and neglectedness and in terms of importance I think we covered that also last time like what's the scale of the problem and why is it so important to focus on actually knowing what is in your food in terms of tractability like is it solvable is it fixing? It seems like you're, that's the phase two of Teak Origin after measuring, okay, how do we explain these things and are they changeable? Am I right when I summarize it like that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's a fair assessment. I'd say technologically and scientifically, it's completely solvable. I think these problems, the solutions exist.
SPEAKER_01:We don't need any new tech to come.
SPEAKER_00:We don't need any new tech. That's right. But as I was saying before, it's extremely complicated. It's complex. And so it's, there's not a magic silver bullet. It's not a magic solution that just says okay we've invented this so therefore problem solved it's going to take a lot of highly coordinated efforts and patience to fix some of these problems but you can't do any of it until you have this common language that sort of is do we agree basically yeah well until we agree that's right so the farmer is speaking the same language as the supply chain person who's speaking the same language as the store person who's speaking the same language as the consumer until that happens i think we're all still running around like crazy and scattered and there's no concentrated effort to solve this problem
SPEAKER_01:And in terms of neglectiveness, which I always stumble upon, how has that shifted over the last, let's say, year and a month since we talked? Have you seen more? I mean, I've been talking about it a lot, but obviously we live in our little bubble. Nutrient density. Have you seen changes in the discussions you're having on the consumer side, but also the company side, the big retailers you talk to in terms of this focus on what is actually in our food? Has that shifted at all? And if so, where and how?
SPEAKER_00:Incredible. So a year ago when we
SPEAKER_01:were
SPEAKER_00:talking and having some of these... Very heavily commercially oriented with, hey, no problem. That's the business they're in. And ultimately, if it gets better food to people, fantastic. When COVID hit, the conversation, at least specifically around sort of being able to assess nutrient density in our specific technology, the conversation shifted to supply chain resilience. Hey, can I qualify food and or a food supplier from somewhere else in the world without having to send a team there or without having to send food to a lab because all the food labs in the world were shut down? for several months. So could I send one of your instruments and have a supplier assess food? I get the results and say, okay, thumbs up. I'll go ahead and buy this from you. So that was a very short period of sort of just highly reactionary moments of just trying to keep food on the shelf. But now in the last few months, we have seen a wholesale shift like I've never seen before with all my years in doing this towards nutrition and its direct impact on health. And everyone I'm talking to, whether it's on the for-profit retail side or working with big institutions, I think the general consensus is that we're at a place now in terms of the importance of nutrition that everyone expected we would be in five years or maybe even longer. So I think if one positive thing has come out of this pandemic is everyone from a business and from a personal standpoint are really focused on improving or maintaining our health.
SPEAKER_01:I'm very happy to hear that because if you follow, let's say, the normal news, et cetera, I'm always discouraged about the lack of discussion on health and the connection to nutrients and what we eat and what we don't eat and how, et cetera. It's really obviously focused on the masks and washing your hands and all the measures to not get this virus or others, but it's hardly, but it's obviously the mainstream or the news you follow. It's hardly ever about the food we eat or what else can you do to make sure you're less vulnerable or how sick actually are we all, or what's the big discussion on healthcare, which I think we are all having in our bubbles, but I'm very happy to hear that in the retail bubbles, et cetera, that discussion is also happening because it's such a crucial one.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it's fair to say, I mean, there are probably 10 retailers that before COVID you would probably never say that they had a grand vision around this, but they're talking about it now. And hey, they're probably talking about it because their customers are talking about it, but nonetheless, they're talking about it. Which is
SPEAKER_01:amazing.
SPEAKER_00:It's amazing. And what's great about these companies is they have the scale to bring better food to people faster. So yeah, I think it's a win for the entire food system.
SPEAKER_01:No, and I've seen, I mean, I've seen the numbers of many, I mean, direct to consumer brands, but also farmers. I mean, they've all gone through the roof, especially at the got access to food and suddenly we were thinking who do we know who has eggs or vegetables etc where can i buy something but many of those customers stayed not all not the 300 growth that many had in a few months but many stayed for price for quality for convenience for taste for whatever for the connection and in the local food market it has been a huge shift as well let's see how that and many have done numbers that they didn't expect for the next three four years so we're probably in a place where yeah we thought to be in five years or so in many places of the market. And of course, it's been an enormous hit for many other places of the market, like the restaurants and hotels. And if you've been selling to them, you are and were probably in deep trouble. It's just devastating. That's right. Many won't open again, but we'll see in the next years if this has been a, in general, good thing or at least happy accident within a huge pandemic and a huge suffering, but at least a focus on food and health. And I'm happy to hear that the big retailers are starting to pay attention a bit faster than we thought they would. Yeah, me too. No, that's knock on wood. We're recording this on Friday, so you can actually have the weekend to think about it. Let's say Monday morning, you're in charge, you wake up and you're in charge of quite a large investment portfolio. I'm saying a billion, not because I think it's a perfect number, but I see a lot of interest into the space coming from larger investors. And I think the sector as a whole, we need to start thinking about larger numbers, not because investment is perfect, not because we all need to raise a lot of money, but because there's going to be pressure on the sector and to reach the impact we want to have, I think we need to be comfortable with a lot of zeros. So what if you would be in charge of an investment portfolio like that on next Monday, what would you focus on and how would you put that to work?
SPEAKER_00:Well, first of all, I was questioning the decision of anyone who put me in charge of that, but let's say nonetheless, I ended up with it. It's interesting because a couple of years ago, a few of us just got together who are super passionate about food system change. And we said, you know what, just for as a fun design exercise, let's build what we think would be sort of a utopian food system. Hey, if we could start from scratch and just say hey how would this thing work you know from the beginning to the end and that conversation broke down so quickly because we understood right away that there were so many biases that each one of us had it was so complex and it was just so confusing to kind of get around social norms and cultural beliefs and just the complexities of how food is delivered from one place to another that we said you know what it's impossible to do here on earth so let's do it as if you were traveling to space and it needed to build a closed loop food system for mars and None of us have any aspirations of being astronauts or going to another planet, but it became so hard to do here that we said, okay, let's just move to another planet and do it. And we were able to kind of say, okay, hey, at least academically, here's all the things that would be needed to sort of deliver optimal nutrition, safety, resource utilization, and pleasure to a specific population. So if I had a billion dollars, I guess, this is shooting from the hip here, I would probably take a million dollars of that and I would try to stitch together together here real solutions that already exist in places around the world of what's working. from inputs to the farm, to the supply chain, to how food's being delivered, how workers are being treated, how people are actually getting the nutrition that they actually need or actually want, while food is still enjoyable.
SPEAKER_01:And when you say stitched together, what do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00:I just mean trying to build like a, we talked about earlier, sort of one of the issues in terms of how solvable is this problem is that we're all operating in silence. And if we had more time on a podcast, I would say, hey, a lot of that is attributed to the investment model and how we actually fund some of these innovations.
SPEAKER_01:We have time. This is not a strict format. So why is that the investment model like at the base of some of these issues? Now I'm going to dig, of course.
SPEAKER_00:I think the investment model that we rely on today for food system change was built for another era and another industry, the tech industry. I think it's built for software and hardware. Of course, there's some software and hardware solutions in food, but it's meant very much to say, hey, you get a little bit of money. You show a little bit of traction. You get a little bit more money. You show a little bit more traction. And sometimes it works, and sometimes you stop at one of those points. The challenge with doing that in food is kind of what we've been talking about now for the last 30 or 40 minutes is that that creates silos. So if I'm investing in a company that's trying to increase yields, then there's a whole ecosystem of companies that are focused on yield expansion. And there's another silo around shipment, and there's another silo around tracking and tracing, and et cetera, et cetera. But there are a few exceptions, of course. Things are changing, but in general, they're not. There are no investment models that say, hey, I need to put all these things together. So I'm not gonna invest in this little company and this little company that I'm gonna make them compete for investment dollars. I'm gonna make them compete for talent. I'm gonna make them compete for the same customers and may the strongest survive. Great, in 10 years from now, we'll find out who really is the best at improving yields, but we don't have 10 years. So I would take a million dollars of that billion dollar fund and I would try to stitch together some of those most promising solutions into a single solution. And it may be hypothetical and it may be only in pilot form, But if I can get 10 things to work together or at least identify what is needed for them to work together, then I think the other$999 million of that could be used to then scale that solution. But to put a billion dollars and invest it in 100 different places and hope that at the end of the day, three or four of those solutions or companies survive, that's just a broken model in my mind. And it's not going to solve any of the major problems that we're facing.
SPEAKER_01:So you would really try to apply a portfolio approach, but with a much longer horizon, or at least not the usual or competing within the portfolio or competing with outside the portfolio. Do you have an example of that? How to make that, that you stitch together 10 solutions? What could that be?
SPEAKER_00:Well, again, we couldn't come up with that before. So we came up with it like, hey, this is what you would do if you landed on a foreign planet that had hostile environment and limited resources and you needed to keep a population happy and alive and safe for a prolonged period of time. And, you know, we had to do that again in sort of this simulated environment. environment. So I don't have good examples of that, but that's what I would do with the first million dollars is find those examples. I mean, I know there are thousands of companies out there in each one of these little silos that are doing great things, but today they don't find one another. They can't, they don't have the time to look up and say, okay, well, I'm going to go and connect my work with someone else. That's just not the reality of the food system we live in today. You're either focused on your existing problems or trying to make that existing solution work. Maybe you have a nice conversation at conferences. And when we were used to be able to go to conferences, But
SPEAKER_01:that's
SPEAKER_00:it. That's it. Then you walk away and you're like, okay, I'm back in survival mode now. I got to go raise money or I got to go hire someone or get this customer deal or survive. And it's really tough. And I understand that's the nature of business, but we're talking about major problems here that are affecting humanity and threatening our planet. And so it requires a different approach.
SPEAKER_01:And a different investor or a different investment approach as well. That's
SPEAKER_00:right. And it's food. So there's always going to be a market. There's always going to be a return on that investment. Hey, the better you can connect all these dots and make it work more efficiently there's always going to be a return on that investment because people need to eat so it's not a risky investment it's just a complicated process and it's a complicated investment and we're not good at complicated no
SPEAKER_01:that's definitely true
SPEAKER_00:that's why no one gives me a billion dollars by the way
SPEAKER_01:because maybe after they listen to this they think but actually right i mean for me one of the interesting parts is the amount of money that tries to get into the space using the old model and in many cases using the software model especially on timing and horizon and indeed the competition And it's going to be challenging, but what I'm seeing most is that the amount of money that tries to enter the space is growing exponentially. The amount of investable, and obviously that depends on the model you're using as an investor, but the amount of investable companies or projects or et cetera is definitely not there. So there's going to be a lot of competition. Hopefully, let's say the companies on the ground, I don't know if you can affirm to that, can at least, they can pick the investor or they have a bit of choice, or hopefully in the next years they have a bit of choice of what money they take on and what kind of money they take on. and what kind of conditions comes with that and not having to always go for the fund or the VC fund that needs to exit in a relatively short period and meaning putting a lot of stress on the company. So I'm hoping that that competition helps at least for the companies to pick the right type of growth capital or the right type of capital to basically be appropriate for them.
SPEAKER_00:I hope so. And before you press record today, I know we were talking about some others that are out there and they have different investment thesis. And so, yeah, change is happening. I just, it needs to happen with a sense of urgency and at the pace that the problems are growing.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:And that's not happening yet. There's definitely hope and there are signs of change, but as always, change is slow.
SPEAKER_01:If you would like to learn more on how to put money to work in regenerative food and agriculture, find our video course on investinginregenerativeagriculture.com slash course. This course will teach you to understand the opportunities, to get to know the main players, to learn about the main trends and how to evaluate a new investment opportunity And what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture that others don't believe to be true? This is definitely inspired by John Kempf, who asked this question usually about traditional agriculture, and who, by the way, shared our previous interview in his newsletter and made it explode, basically. So suddenly there was a huge uptake around Christmas, I think, last year, and we didn't understand where it came from until I saw the newsletter of John So if you're listening, John, thank you for that. But the question, what do you believe to be true about regional or regional agriculture practices that others don't believe to be true?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, boy, I would never claim to know anything that I would think that other people don't know, considering the level of passion. Where do you have another opinion? Or where do you have another angle to it? Here's what I believe is true and has to happen for regenerative agriculture to become truly mainstream and have the impact that we all hope it has. I think as individuals, as consumers, I have to be able to say, hey, how does this directly affect me and my family, not just the long horizon of planetary and human health? So what does this mean for me today, and what can I do differently as a result of something that you're doing that has a positive effect on my life? And it's obvious, and yet it's not obvious because we're still not directly answering that, or we're still not able to directly answer that question. So I don't know if that's a dancing around what you asked me, but I think that has to be the driver of all the decisions, investments, innovations, all the work we put into regenerative agriculture. It has to be around an individual being able to answer that question confidently.
SPEAKER_01:It has to be better for me and my family, basically. And which comes back to the nutrient discussion we obviously had in the last 47 minutes and the key questions around measuring that, which I think is a very fair answer. I'm not dancing around it at all. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:there's so many important questions. elements of food but at the end of the day fundamentally we're eating to stay alive and survive and so it has to come down to that the basic questions have to be answered hey is this good for me or not now beyond that we all have different values and we can apply those values and there's lots of other important things but today we cannot answer the most fundamental question about a piece of food in our hand and that is what's inside of it so i think we have to be able to do that first
SPEAKER_01:which is still extremely shocking even after two interviews with you i want to Thank you so much. Be conscious of your time. And thank you so much for this check-in. As always, extremely interesting. And you've been up to a lot in a year. And I hope to be checking in with you again to see what has been happening in your nutrient density world.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we certainly appreciate the opportunity to talk about what we're doing. So thank you so much and be happy to come back whenever you would have us.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. Thank you so much, Greg. If you found the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast valuable, there are a few simple ways you can use Thank you so much. And see you at the next podcast.
