How Innovators Are Disrupting Our Broken Food System

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

This is one of those global challenges that every single person can actually do something about. Just being aware of the fact that food waste is a challenge can make people start to reduce their own food waste in their homes.

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Hi, this is Lauren Fein, one of the producers of the Doctor's Pharmacy podcast. There are numerous challenges to overcome when it comes to our troubled food system. Fortunately, there are also many bright minds acting as disruptors of the status quo and reminding us that even the most basic of ideas can lead to enormous change. In today's episode, we feature three conversations from the Doctor's Pharmacy about innovative ideas to save money and change the future of our food supply. Dr. Hyman speaks with Kavita Shukla about how to keep produce fresh longer and avoid food waste, with Tobias Peggs on supporting the younger generation to begin farming and growing indoors, and with Dan Barber on selecting seeds for breeding to enhance flavor and nutrition.

Let's dive in. I went to the grocery store with my mom and she asked me to buy strawberries. And I noticed that all of the boxes of berries seemed to have like fuzz growing on them. Yeah, what is that? Yeah, and so that was the first time I'd seen mold as a kid. And I thought, okay, well maybe I can dip strawberries in my mixture. So I went home and I started dipping strawberries and some other fruits and veggies in this mixture I'd been creating. And I went back in the garage a couple days later and I was just astounded. They stayed fresh for several days. And I remember I was so happy.

And you had a control group of strawberries?

Yeah, so I had strawberries that I had left in one corner of the garage. And then in the other corner, I had dipped a whole bunch of strawberries and some apples and pears. And I still remember, I just couldn't believe it. I was so excited. And I went out and I got many different fruits and vegetables, and I kept doing it. And then to make a long story short, I spent most of high school.

As this weird girl rotting fruits and.

Vegetables in my garage. So you basically started your business in your garage, just like Apple, right? Yeah, kind of. But much more simple. simple, very low tech. And then that eventually led me to this idea of creating a packaging that could be put in any container that was infused with these organic spices that are naturally antifungal and antibacterial.

And how did you figure that out? Because, you know, to get from the spices in the jar with the strawberry to infused paper with protective properties against spoilage, how did you get that idea?

Yeah, so I feel really fortunate that I was just a kid, I think, when I was working on this, because I had very limited resources and I thinking about it in a very simplistic way, which now I think is what is Fresh Paper's greatest advantage, is that it's such a simple, low-tech way to keep your food fresh for longer. And so I remember when I was creating this mixture with the spices, I realized that it was messy. I think my mom would complain that I was always making a mess. And so I thought, well, no one can use that. And I was really thinking about my grandmother. I was thinking about people who lived in places like India without access to refrigeration. And so I wanted to figure out a way to make this a way for them to keep their food fresh. And then, you know, I went to the craft store and like the only materials I could access as a kid were like paper or paper-based products. So I started with paper and it was really effective. And then I realized that, well, you know, paper is something that is quite easy to source. It's pretty low cost and it's something that could be used by anyone in any part of the world without any fancy infrastructure.

So.

Yeah, so that was kind of how it all got started. But I'm so grateful that I was.

Able to- and it's this little thing here.

It's just like a little piece of heaven. That's it. It's a tiny little sheet that's infused with spices. And it smells so good.

Yeah, so that's from the active spices.

That are infused into it. It's like, yeah, smells like maple syrup. A lot of people say it's like maple syrup. It's fenugreek, right?

And then in about a month that scent fades and then you just compost it or recycle. And so it's active for a month and then it's something that you just compost. Yeah, so it's fascinating because you take this paper and you just stick it.

With the food in the fridge in a container and a bag and a box.

And it doesn't even have to be.

Touching all of them.

Exactly.

So how does that work? Yeah, well, you know, spices are aromatics and I think people are always- so.

The aroma goes in the air. Exactly.

It's off-gassing basically. Yeah, and so if you think about it, you know, spices have been used for a very long time to keep food fresh, especially in climates like in India. That's where my grandmother learned about all these properties of spices. So the innovation with fresh paper is infusing these spices that have antifungal properties into a method where it can actually be used from farm to fork. So you're right, in your home, you would just put a sheet in your refrigerator drawer and your fruit bowl. And one little sheet is actually enough for about a one foot radius. So one sheet's enough for an entire fruit bowl or an entire fridge drawer, and it'll keep all your produce fresh. You can swap it out. But what I love is people will cut them down sometimes into like a fourth of a sheet and put it into a berry container. Yeah. Because it's made only with edible ingredients, you can feel comfortable having it in your foods.

You can put it in a lettuce container. You can put it in like a huge tub of salad mix.

It's closed within the packaging. In other words, does it have to.

Have a cover on this? strawberries or can just be open in the fridge.

Airflow is great. So you actually always want airflow when.

You'Re storing your vegetables.

So you can stick it in your.

Vegetable drawer without having everything. Exactly.

Because, you know, those nasty rotten vegetables, it's terrible. It's discouraging. And as you were saying, it's horrible for the environment. I think, you know, cutting down on food waste is one of the most impactful things we can do for our planet. The average American family actually loses over 1500 worth of food. That's just wasted. So when you first think about just the fact that people are saying it's difficult for them to be able to afford a fresh, healthy diet. Food waste is one of the key pillars of that. Because if you can reduce waste, you're suddenly able to stretch your dollars. And if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you know, you may feel like it's a good economic decision to buy something in a box or to go buy fast food just for calories per dollar. But if you think about being able to extend the shelf life of fresh produce, it suddenly becomes more affordable. But then when you think about the planet, when you think about the amount of land, water, energy, and labor that goes into creating a single apple and bringing that to your grocery store. So it's not just harvesting that apple, but then putting it on a truck, putting it through cold chain storage system.

And then getting it to your grocery store.

The amount of energy we use too. It's incredible. And they say that food waste is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. But what I have found really exciting and encouraging when you look at this discouraging problem is that even really simple and small interventions like cutting your own personal food waste, just like we started to do recycling and composting, can have a big impact. impact just because there are so many inputs into creating produce that eventually is just thrown away to the landfill. Because, you know, I was shocked to learn that we actually grow enough food to feed every single person on the planet, but over 800 million people go hungry every single day. And we lose, in some parts of the world, over 50, 60% of our world's food simply because of inefficiencies in how we're storing it, producing it, and getting it from farm to fork. So even though it can be really discouraging, I remember when I first learned the magnitude of the problem, I thought, oh, that's really depressing. You know, how can how can somebody like me, how can a team like ours even think about addressing this challenge? But what I found really inspiring was that this is one of those global challenges that every single person can actually do something about. And even doing something simple has a big impact. Because you do have to think about all the land, water, energy, and human labor that went into every single fresh food item in your fridge. And when you start to think about it that way, I think it's inspiring to see that people make small changes in their behavior. And research has even shown that just being aware of food waste. That's why advocacy is such a big part of our work. Just being aware of the fact that food waste is a challenge can make people start to reduce their own food waste in their homes. So that's encouraging.

Yeah, it's great. And so the product in a way is both a solution and an inspiration to talk about the issue that no one's talking about.

Yeah, that's what it's turned into. And that was because of this grassroots movement that really started at that farmer's market. And that's what keeps us going every day. is seeing how people are being inspired and then they're writing to us and.

Telling us how it's working. And it was fascinating to me as you didn't start out saying, I'm going to solve the problem of food waste. You're like, I'm going to take my grandmother's recipe and see if I can help a few people. And you really didn't even understand the context of what you were doing at the time. And now it's like, oh wow, you know, I created a solution for a problem that I really know existed in.

A scale that it exists. And now you actually are inspiring people to think about food waste in a different way. Yeah, that, Farmers market changed my life. And I tell all entrepreneurs and inventors now that the simple act of putting your idea into the hands of somebody who could benefit from it can change everything. And so it was that early feedback that made me realize, okay, maybe I'm not thinking big enough. You know, maybe this could go beyond just my little idea for a farmers market to something that could affect the food system. So that that was certainly very- and.

Your story is important because it inspires people to think what they can do. Because it feels very disempowering when you think of these big global problems like climate change, like food waste, like hunger, obesity, agricultural problems. And here you are just one person having this global impact in over 100 countries just from an idea that you had that you didn't know couldn't be done.

-It was inspiring for me too. There were so many moments though where I was ready to give up. I mean, there were so many moments where I just felt like there's no way that I could take another step forward. But there were always people that stepped up. There was the first person who ever took a chance on me. His name was Tony Russo. Russo, and he's the head of Russo's, which is a third generation family farm stand in Watertown, Massachusetts. So he was one of my first retail customers, and he taught me how to build a business from the ground up. He had this experience before Whole Foods. Yeah. So right before Whole Foods, that was the first, like, retailer. And they were, like, a firm stand, so it felt comfortable to me. Right. I would go stand in Russo's every weekend and tell people about the product, and Tony would just Mentor us. So it was people like that. You know, my high school science teacher.

Was probably the first person who told me, you should think about taking a little bit further. Were you living on rice and beans and ramen?

And how did you get- yeah, well, that's one of the funny things is that when I did eventually realize this was going to go somewhere and I left my job and I was working out of my studio apartment, I was one living a very unhealthy lifestyle and eating tons of processed food. So it even took me a while. It was quite a journey for me to understand what these people who were coming and telling me about how this product was changing their lives, they educated me on the power of a plant-based diet. They taught me about how they were transforming their lives with a simple tool and how it was enabling them to eat more fruits and veggies. And then I started to learn about it. And you got healthier in the system. Yeah, and it made me much healthier. But I think it gave me a real appreciation for what individuals can do when we come together and just believe in the sense that the food system can be different.

Yeah.

You know, I get so discouraged sometimes. We were talking about this earlier when I look at what's happening in the food system, but then you see these innovators, you see these people who are supporting the innovators and you see that, okay, the tide is turning. You're one of those people. We can start to make a change as long as we can communicate with them.

And it can be simple ideas. A friend of mine started a company called Watermelon Water.

I love that.

Yeah.

Jody.

Jody had 800 million pounds of watermelon that was ugly.

Yeah.

And misshapen or bleached by the sun and was white. So they didn't. Wasn't a perfect watermelon. And then they turned those 800 million pounds of watermelon into a product called Watermelon Water, which is like an electrolyte replacement drink. It's way better than Gatorade.

Right. Yeah. And it's helping people consume fresh fruits and veggies without even realizing it.

So I think that's fantastic. And so those kinds of things are really inspiring and people can solve these problems and they can make choices in their daily life that make a difference. I think that's the thing that people don't connect with is they see the problem, it's overwhelming, they feel disempowered, they give up and your story, what you created both as an entrepreneur and the product you created, give people a way to actually change what they're doing in their life. And it's super exciting.

Thank you. Well, you know, it just taught me that you just have to take one small step or whatever you're trying to do. It's just that one step.

The other part of your product is so fascinating to me is that, you know, we think of these high-tech solutions. You know, we need digital solutions, we need AI, we need all this stuff to solve our world's problems. And you're basically doing it with a piece of paper and a bunch of grandma spices, you know? And what's fascinating is that nature is often smarter than we are. And most of our drugs come and are inspired by herbs. with various pathways that have effects. And one of the foundational principles that I work from in functional medicine is that food is medicine. And so essentially you've created a pharmacologic paper, pharmacologic with an F, right? And it is more effective than anything anybody's come up with to reduce spoilage and rotting in food. And one of the fundamental principles I teach is that you should only eat food that rots. Right?

That's a really good point, actually. Yeah.

But you don't want it to rot too fast.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So this is a great way to figure that out. So, you know, as someone with this crazy idea, what were the biggest challenges that you face other than what you sort of shared already about everybody telling you it can't be done? Yeah. You know, what were those things that were those moments where you're like, this isn't going to work, but what happened to help you get through that?

Yeah, well, you know, I think I initially even dismissed Fresh Paper after I started to get some feedback because it's so simple. It is just this tiny little sheet. And I think when people look at it, you know, they're used to thinking about reducing food waste and reducing food spoilage as something with a very sophisticated, like, cold chain infrastructure solution. And I was thinking about a technology that could be used in the developing world. And so one thing that I've since learned is that, you know, Fresh Paper is powerful because It is so simple and it can be used by anyone in any part of the world. So the very reason that I felt I was underestimated, even I started to think, well, no one will ever take this seriously because it's this little sheet of paper. Who's going to want to put it into their strawberry container? Or how will I convince a retailer to put it on their shelves or convince a farmer to put into their packaging? It's so different from what they're used to. And what they were used to were these big, if you're looking at maybe a clamshell of strawberries, it was these plastic containers that have been molded in a certain way. And then there's chemicals applied at every step of the process. And I think I thought, well, this solution is just plants. It's so different. And now I realize that really is what changed everything is that it is something that can be implemented at every step in the food supply chain from farm to fork. It can easily be used by consumers. And the very same technology that you would use in your home, in your fruit bowl or in your fruit store, is used by a farmer in India or by a food bank that's working in a disaster relief area. So I think the biggest lesson for me in all of this was understanding the power of simplicity. And that simplicity is really, the simple ideas are the ones that have the power to change things because they can be spread quickly and they can be adapted by people from all different backgrounds. So I've come a long way too in my understanding. And that, I think what helped me through that was going to the farmer's market and talking to people that were using it.

Yeah, and seeing the stories. So tell us across the food chain, I mean we understand that we can take this and put it in our fridge and put in our strawberries. that's easy concept to understand. But when you're talking about farmers and you're talking about the food processors and the distributors and the retailers, it's harder for me to understand how this gets inserted in that supply chain because all those steps are opportunities for food waste, right?

Exactly.

And not just in your fridge or the consumer, but all those steps. The farmers and producers, the processors, the retailers, It's a huge problem. So how does this get inserted in that in a way that actually is meaningful? 'Cause in this little piece of paper, you can put it in a truck with 4,000 pounds of tomatoes.

How do you like? Yeah, that's a great question. So that was something I had to think about too. Once I started to hear from growers and retailers, I had to think bigger. And the reason the sheets are this size, most people don't know this, is I was cutting them by hand with a paper cutter from Staples. And so I was cutting down like a little eight and a half by 11. That was the standard size. And then people would say, oh, this is the perfect size for my fruit bowl Or this is the perfect size to cut down and put into like a berry container because they'll cut a fourth of a sheet. But then when I would hear from growers that were thinking about pallets or like you said, a container full of lettuce, we had to rethink the process. And honestly, going from making sheets by hand to making millions and millions of sheets was almost an entire reinvention. I had to almost recreate the product from scratch. And it was very challenging. And I wanted to use organic ingredients. I wanted to do it in the United States for quality. And so it was really difficult. But what we figured out was that we could create it in large roles and then customize it for the different solutions. So, you know, we create basically a custom solution for a strawberry grower that might be different from what we would create for like a mango producer or a lettuce producer. So it's, it's been really interesting. I've learned a lot about the agricultural system, which has been both scary and sometimes encouraging. And I think, you know, I've also seen how many points there are for disruption and how much we can actually do to make it more efficient because I think a lot of things have been done the same way for a long time.

So let's say, Walmart, for example, they're, I don't think people realize this, but.

I think they're the biggest grocery store chain in the world. They're America's grocer.

More people get their groceries at Walmart than anywhere else. And they have a lot of organic food and across their supply chain, they've been able to implement policies that have changed the marketplace. Like they said, we don't want trans fats or we don't want more packaging than this amount. And you have to redo your packaging or you can't sell at Walmart. So they can influence from the farmers, to the fork, what happens? Have they actually taken this idea and inserted it across their supply chain? Yeah, so I've gone to Ben &.

Jerry's a few times and it's been fascinating. Those early conversations with them totally changed how I was thinking about the American food system because I learned a lot of what you were just saying. And so we're working with them to figure out solutions that can be implemented by their growers. Obviously that supply chain project is a much longer path. So it's already in retail stores and people can purchase it at Walmart and use it in their homes. But the goal obviously is to insert the product from the moment food is harvested until it shows up on your plate. So you can actually have a much longer extension shelf life and a greater reduction in food waste at every single step.

So have you been able to actually implement that?

Yeah, so we work with a number of growers and retailers. We actually make shelf liners for retailers, but with the large, large scale growers, we're just starting to implement the product now because that's such a systemic change. So we, you know, we have self-funded from the very beginning. So we like to start small. scale up, make sure that we understand the ideal solution. And then we were starting to implement on a large scale. Yeah.

Because, you know, all along that chain, there's ways for disrupting it.

Yeah, it's very exciting actually to see now. So, so maybe you need like a.

Billion sheets a month.

Yeah, that's, I think one day, you know, that, that may be exactly where we're heading.

Well, there's 7 billion people and everybody.

Eats three times a day. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the numbers, when I went to the growers that work with Walmart and the growers that work with some of the other retailers that supply American stores, it was mind blowing. I mean, I had never seen that much produce. It's crazy to understand the size of the challenge, but I also said, you know, there's ways that very simple interventions can have massive impact.

I know a farmer's open to it.

So that was interesting. You know, I think what I've been encouraged by is they are all struggling with food waste and food spoilage. And the interesting thing is reducing food waste is really good for their bottom line. It's good for retailers, it's good for farmers. Everybody is incentivized to actually reduce waste. I think there's a lot of concern that implementing technologies that are expensive or that require them to retool how they've been doing things is not worth it. And so I think that's where Fresh Paper has been really successful because they don't have to build a new factory or change how they already are packaging their fruit. It's something that's been inserted into the system. And that wasn't something I realized when I was 12. But today I'm like, oh, because it's a little sheet. It can actually be customized for anyone. And I think that's why it's taken off, is it's not requiring them to.

Change how they've been doing things. Now, there's another maybe unintended consequence of what you're doing. Maybe you thought of it, but when we harvest food in California and we ship it to, you know, Minnesota or South Carolina, it loses its nutritional value along that distribution chain from when it's picked to when it's shipped to when it's on the retail shelf to when you cook it. and I wonder, maybe there's data on this, not, but it seems to me that if you're preserving the food with spices, you're actually protecting the nutritional density and the nutrient content of the food. Is that something you thought of?

Yeah, so we've just started to study that because that's a great question and people have asked us that. And we have seen in our early work that it does appear that the food is more, I think because you're keeping it preserved essentially how I describe it to people. the state that you first inserted the sheet. So that's why we want to get it in at the farm. But you are able to preserve the nutritional kind of makeup of the product. And I think what is most important to remember is it just tastes better. And, you know, we know that fruit tastes better. It's encouraging to keep eating it. And so I think the nutritional profile, we're still researching that. But the key is that when fresh food actually tastes like it's supposed to taste, it's much easier to keep consuming it.

And that will certainly change how you consume food. It's true and taste and nutritional density are actually parallel.

Exactly.

So, if you eat a wild strawberry, it's about the size of a peanut, but it tastes unbelievable compared to a regular strawberry because it's so nutrient dense, but the flavor comes from all the phytochemicals and all the special molecules that dissipated through the food chain distribution channels.

Exactly. And that's where we first realized that is everyone would say, oh, well, I feel like my food tastes fresher, it tastes different. And I think when you look at food sometimes, the reason it's hard to keep encouraging people to eat fresh fruits and veggies is often some of these fruits and veggies are tasteless. And so that's why I think the taste part of it shouldn't be dismissed. It's actually really critical to changing your diet is to have fresh food that actually tastes incredible because that's what encourages.

You to reach for those strawberries when you might want to make a different choice that isn't as healthy.

It's true.

I bet it also affects the stability of organic food because most food that's grown in industrial ways stays fresher longer, has less nutrients, and may look better but doesn't taste better and isn't better for you.

Exactly.

But organic food tends to waste faster because it's not preserved and you end up with more spoilage. So I imagine this is a way for us to actually encourage different agricultural practices by growing food in a sustainable way. I think it's a way for us to actually get more nutrient-dense food in ways that we weren't able to before. So there's probably all these unintended consequences that you couldn't have foreseen when you.

Were 12 years old. -That's been the most inspiring part. And I'm hearing that from other people, which I think is really what encourages me to keep going. Because, you know, as we were saying, it hasn't been easy and it can be very challenging at points. But it's just realizing that, you know, it is a connected system. And when we can make a positive change, whether it's in our own lives or in the food system in one small way, it actually does trickle down to every other aspect. And I think that's what keeps me going about the food system too, is that it does seem daunting to try to change the course that we're on right now, but there's so much that we can actually do to start to improve the quality of the food that we consume.

You're right. You're raising up a new generation of farmers that is absolutely essential because in this country, the average age of farmers is 58 to 60. People are aging out of farming. There are really very few supports for young farmers to enter the marketplace. The land acquisition costs are so high, the land has become financialized because corporations have bought it up because it's actually got more land value than agricultural value. So we're really in a situation where young farmers have a real barrier to entering the market. But you created a whole program that's called Next Gen Farmer Training Program that allows you to bring in people who want to be part of the solution and create a career out of it. Can you talk about why you're doing that? Because you could just be selling herbs and vegetables and why would you find that?

Yeah, right. I mean, you're right. At the beginning of the pod, you were articulating the issues with the industrial food system, right? Chronic waste, terrible for the planet, all of these things, pollution, diabetes, 70% of our food has got pesticides in it. This is all horrific. and then this extra topic that doesn't get as much air time as it should is this demographic time bomb that's about to go off. If the average age of a farmer today is 58, who's going to grow the food in five or six years time when they retire? It's frightening. But to your point, very, very hard then for young people to start a career in farming. And quite frankly, if you're 22, 23, do you want to live in the middle of the country in a big big, you know, farmer.

Or in Brooklyn, be a Brooklyn farmer.

Right, exactly. You know, and be surrounded by technology and, you know, like a, you know, have an opportunity to, to, you know, really change the world. Right. And so, again, when we were putting the business together, you know, we, we realized, first and foremost, that if we're going to build an urban farming company, we need farmers at the center of the system. Now, that might sound obvious. Right. But there are A lot of entrepreneurs in this indoor farming space who are raising a ton of venture capital money to build robots and automation and AI and all these kind of buzzwords.

Yeah, there's literally hundreds of millions of dollars flowing to this vertical farming.

Basically to take labor out of the system, right? Because that's one of the most expensive inputs, right? And there's a lot of amazing technology going on there. Our fundamental thought, though, belief really was that It's the farmer that's at the center of the system, right? The person that's willing this plant to come to life that just makes it taste better, right? It's like when you're cooking, right?

You put it in a Vitamix. Vitamix.

Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I have a PhD in AI, right? I've spent my whole life in data science and, you know, I found it very, very difficult to kind of rationalize that answer initially, but I just know that But it's true, right? It's the love that the farmer puts in that makes the food taste great. So we had to figure out how do we provide a pathway for young people to come in and learn how to be farmers, provide that love in the system. But we also wanted to do that in a way that was creating a positive social impact on the world, right? How can we empower and educate and inspire and get more young people into this local food movement? they can spend, you know, 12 months with us, 24 months with us, and then when they graduate and they leave Square Roots, you know, are they now inspired and do they have the tools and are they ready to set up their own local food companies? Right? Because the more of us working on this local food revolution, the better, right? So that was kind of the genesis of, okay, what, you know, what can we do here to bring more young people into the industry?

So great. It's so important because we do have a crisis in farming and agriculture. We're trying to shift, and there's so many movements, there's regenerative agriculture that is really defining a whole new way of thinking about growing food that restores the soil, that reduces carbon in the environment, that preserves water, that reduces chemical inputs and fertilizers. These are all really essential activities. And vertical farming is not going to solve our entire food problem, but it does fill a niche that is really important, which is how do we bring food into urban environments where more and more people are moving to across the globe, where there's less access in many areas for healthy food.

And who's going to do that? So that was the reason why we put this NextGen Farmer training program together, which is there aren't the millions of farmers who understand these systems who can make this happen. And so what the NextGen Farmer program is, it's a 12-month program. Young people come and they work with us for a year, we basically surround them with technology and training and a team so that they go from, you know, perhaps zero experience growing plants to become a really competent farmer within about four weeks. The technology platform helps them do that, right? It kind of guides them through their day to day. Okay, buddy, you're in, you know, this farm today, you've got to harvest the basil, you know, here's how to do it.

You run your farm through your smartphone.

Yeah, that's exactly right. They literally open an app on the phone and the system is kind of giving them instructions of what to do today, right? At the end of that harvest day, then that food gets aggregated and packed and distributed all across New York.

And it's done through bicycles. That's right. The carbon footprint is basically whatever the guy who's driving the bike or the.

Woman who's driving the bike ate, right? Yeah, it's so fun. We have these little electronic tricycles with climate-controlled modules. on the front of them, right? So the food literally goes from the farm straight into the climate control bike and then boom, we cycle all around.

Town and distribute the food that way. Like a different meaning of the word recycle.

Right.

Okay, so are you riding the bikes as part of your training to get around the city?

Of course, yeah.

I mean, well, to be fair, actually, we do do that. Every new employee that comes into Square Roots, they spend a month in the farm, right? You gotta learn how to do this thing. And then for sure, they're on the bikes, they're in the stores doing demos.

Like, you know, you've gotta be able to kind of the walk, the walk, right?

Yeah, as well as talk the talk.

So let's talk about something that is also an important piece of the food story, which I think there's debate about how this approach impacts that.

And that's climate change.

It's really clear from emerging research that our food system is the number one source of climate change.

Yeah, 30% of greenhouse gases, right?

Yeah, 30%. But if you add in food waste, you add in all the transportation, you add in the whole, not just, you know, animal factory farms. And you add the whole value chain, some estimate that it's between 40 to 60%.

Yeah, it's frightening.

So it's frightening. It's bigger than the energy sector's contribution. So if we just completely stopped fossil fuel use today, everybody switched to electric cars and had zero emissions, we'd still have catastrophic temperatures within two decades. So the only solution is to reimagine agriculture and farming at scale.

Mm-.

And the idea of a carbon farm essentially is that soil is a big sink for carbon. It's basically the plants draw carbon out of the environment and store it in the soil, the microbes feed on it, and it becomes this wonderful virtuous cycle.

Mm-.

And the hypothesis that some have is that if we do this at scale, we can actually draw down carbon, and it's the biggest carbon sink on the planet, bigger than the rainforest.

Mm-.

Right now, soil on the planet contains three times as much carbon as the entire environment in the atmosphere. So with industrial farming, it's clearly a problem. Regenerative farming is a promising solution. How does vertical farming, hydroponics, aeroponics, how does it all fit into that? Because there are energy inputs to the system, right? So yes, you have a container and it's sitting in Brooklyn somewhere in a warehouse, but you have to have lights, it's driven by electricity, you have to have cooling and temperature control, and there's water use, but it's, I think, far less than traditional agriculture. But so there's, how do you, how do you kind of reconcile that? What does the data show? I know that Cornell are doing some research to look at all these variables. I don't know if anybody's really sort of figured it out, but I wonder, is it got a positive benefit or is it a negative benefit to the environment?

Yeah.

And, and I think, right. No one, no one has figured it out.

Right.

And you're going to to take maybe years, right, to figure out the exact impact of industrial farming, right, and then to do the comparison with indoor farming. With indoor farming, there's so, because it's a technology driven industry, right, there are so many efficiencies that happen every day, literally, right? But by the time that five year study, you know, that's commissioned and is finished, like it's kind of out of date, right, because the industry has moved on. That's a fantastic thing about indoor farming, right?

And you could run off solar power, wind power.

Well, wind power, right? So we're opening a farm in Michigan right now that is wind power, right? Which is absolutely incredible. And you have to think intuitively, right? That if you have an industrial farm where there's, you know, chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, you know, that the, you know, farmers are kind of overplanting to hedge against nature, right? Think of all the resources that that takes. And then you've got to distribute food maybe across the world. you know, the refrigeration costs along the way, et cetera, et cetera. Intuitively, it's got to make sense to grow not all. I would never say this is, you know, a complete disruption.

And you can't grow everything in there.

Exactly, right. But I would say, you know, perishable produce, right? Your herbs, your leafy greens, some fruits. Like, let's start thinking about how to do this at scale indoor. in the same zip code as the end consumer as soon as possible. Now, I'll tell you this, right? In the UK where I grew up, the intensive farming techniques that we're using were eroding the topsoil at such a rate that there is only about 50 years worth of harvests left in outdoor soil, right?

If we continue the current practices.

If we continue the current practices, right? So you can sit here and pontificate, you know, for the next 10 years, right? To figure out, okay, which is, you know, you know, is the carbon footprint of this better than Now we're 10 years closer to that 50-year kind of apocalyptic cliff where we can't grow food outdoors.

So you have to- and it's not just there. Before Obama left, he had people working on the soil issue and they estimated in the United States by the end of the century, we're running out of soil. We're done.

So you've got to do something. So the way that we think about-.

No soil, no food, no humans. We get climate change.

Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, when we think about resources, right, we think about space, we think about water, and we think about energy, right? So, from a space perspective, we're growing using vertical walls, right? So, we kind of take that two dimensional field, and we turn it on its end, and kind of rack that field inside these boxes, right? So, now we're growing food in three dimensions instead of two dimensions, and that means you get a lot more food from the same size footprint. footprint, right? So theoretically now we could think about saving, you know, like an apartment building.

Versus a single level.

That's exactly right, right? And so now let's think about, okay, well if we're sort of, you know, saving, you know, acres and acres and acres of farmland because we're growing indoors using this kind of very smart space system, you know, can we, what else now can we do with that outdoor land to do things like take carbon out of the air, right? So you can work in collaboration with the outdoor farmer, right? This isn't just the only part of the solution. Of course. On the water side, these are hydroponic farms, so there's no soil. What that means is there's no water runoff, right? Like you would have in an outdoor farm. So these are very, very efficient in terms of water use, right? Some estimates claim that hydroponic indoor farming uses about 90% less water than the equivalent outdoor farm. So that's a good thing.

Which is important because we're running out of water too.

Not just soil.

Completely. And then the third thing is energy. So yes, we do have artificial lights inside these farms. It's the light that gives the plant the energy that it then turns into biomass to grow.

Called photosynthesis.

Exactly. You need that. What we are able to do though is through studying photosynthesis, you begin to understand what spectrum of light the plant uses at certain points during its growth period. And then the artificial light, we're only pushing into the farm the exact spectrum that the plant needs, right? So often when you look at pictures of indoor farms, there's pink lights everywhere, right? It's kind of red and blue lights because that's the spectrum.

It looks like a disco.

Right, that's like the Studio 54 of farming. We've been called many times. But the reason for that is is one about energy efficiency, right? Which is if we're flooding this farm with white light, you then have all that spectrum either side of the red and blue that would just be wasted light, right? The plant doesn't use it, wasted light, wasted energy. Let's not do that. Let's hyper focus the spectrum of light to give the plant just what it needs, right? And then finally, as technologists, we're obviously making all of that more and more efficient every single day, right? If I'm an outdoor farmer, I can't suddenly look at the sun and make it twice as efficient tomorrow to half my costs or double my yield. As an indoor farmer, I can look at those lights and make them twice as efficient over time and bring that positive impact to the whole model through technology over time.

It seems like if you can add in the renewables to it, like solar, wind, that you can actually make a real argument that it's 100% actually much better. Because it is more intensive. And then the question is, where are we at in the affordability? Because when you start a new industry, I remember when I bought my first calculator, which added, subtracted, multiplied and divided, and that was it. It was $100 for that. And now you can get a smartphone that's a supercomputer for close to that. What is the price challenges around this? Because it's more expensive than traditional, more expensive than organic.

And actually the calculator is a good analogy, right? Electric cars would be another good analogy, right? 10 years ago, electric cars, it made sense to make $100,000 sports cars, right? The Tesla Roadster, right? That was where the technology was suited at that point in time, right? By building the Roadster, a company like Tesla is then able to invest and learn and push that technology and start building the Model S, family sedan available to more people. By selling the Model S, you're then able to invest and learn and get the technology better and build the three, electric cars for everyone. We're getting closer and closer and closer. We're on that same path here with indoor farming. So today, we're able to grow leafy greens, herbs, even some small fruits, at a very competitive price to say an organic farm, right? I think what's really, so kind of price parity is there, but admittedly, price parity still at the premium level, right?

Right.

The long term- if you're on food.

Stamps, it's still a lot of- the.

Long term roadmap here has got to be, you know, not, you know, fancy basil for, you know, yuppies in New York, right?

It's got to be- very fancy, right?

It's got to be real food for everyone, right? And that is what gets us out of bed every day as technologists, as we think about the business model, as we think about how do we bring more farmers into the system so there's more expertise and more people thinking about it, right? Again, the more of us working on this real food revolution, this local food revolution, the faster we're going to get to that end point, right? But it's a journey.

You kind of are a new venture, which is pretty interesting. called Roast 7. And I was at the Milken Conference recently where you spoke and you were talking about this experience you had with a grower where you said, you know, I want squash that tastes better. And the breeder was like, wait, no one has ever asked me how to.

Make food that tastes better.

Well, how did it select for seeds that actually are are selected for flavor. I just thought, I was a joke. I was like, why don't you create a butternut squash that actually tastes good? Because I find butternut squash so, so you have to add sugar, maple syrup. You have to caramelize whatever. You have to get out all the water. And I was like, why don't you make one? I was joking around. I didn't know anything. That was 10 years ago. I knew nothing about breeding. And he looked at me totally serious and he said, no one's ever asked me to breed for flavor. I'd love to. I was like, well, who are you talking to?

Well, it turns out he's talking to the Walmarts of the world, you know?

Because they're interested in the yield and the uniformity.

They want it to look the same, look perfect, be shippable across the country, stay for a long time.

Oh, and taste good. So once you, yeah, it's not like the taste isn't there, it's just way down on the totem pole. And the problem with that is that you're selecting for other things, you're selecting against flavor and against nutrition. And that's what I learned through this process. But we started to create a, we created over the course of several years, a new kind of butternut squash, It's essentially a shrunken butternut squash called the Honey Nut Squash. Now it's now sold coast to coast. It's Blue Apron just harvested 2.4 million pounds. I heard the other day in November. 2.4 million. You're gonna cut it out, I hope. No, no, nothing. No, this was pre the company. This is pre the company. No, but what's interesting about it is that it wouldn't have gone anywhere without me, but other chefs going ape over this thing. I mean, it was just like, it was just like you tasted it, you were just like, started social media and mentioning on the menu and chefs just went crazy. And that's what pulled it into the marketplace. And, you know, when we first showed it to Walmart or, or the equivalent, he was like, I don't have a skew for this size squash.

Yeah.

This is not a butternut squash. I'd have to create a whole new skew. And the thought of that, I mean, it's just, that's what, that's why I was just like, I'll never forget that moment when Michael told me his conversation, because I if that's what we're up against, I cannot believe it. It would stop in the first conversation, Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. There's no SKU for this. Right, right. Because that's not a butternut squash. And you couldn't think outside that. Now, of course, six, seven years later, they figured out to create a new SKU number and they have a SKU.

For it and it's selling and it is going into Walmart stores.

It's a shelf keeping unit. It's basically the measure that they categorize all the things in your grocery store. Right, but he was exactly wrong and that there wouldn't be a market for it. That was his other, point. There wouldn't be a market for something that was 30% smaller than a butternut squash. But it's not filled with 80% water. And butternut squash is bred to take on water because that's where the weight is. So essentially, you're eating water, which as you know better than I do, it's a superfood. This is just offensive. It's like what is our honey nut squash that is now 30% less water, 40% less water with this incredible creamy rich caramel flavor of squash that actually has very good yields. It doesn't have the yields of the big conventional butternut squashes, but incredibly good yields, which is why all these farmers want to grow it, because it's what the market is clamoring for. So that's why we started the company. We're like, wait a minute, why wouldn't we do this with everything? You know, there is a market out there for people who want to eat well. The issue though is that this isn't heirlooms. This isn't looking back at the past and saying, oh, we're going to repatriate a seed that our grandparents loved. because that doesn't change the food system. The yield on those old seeds is very low and if it rains too hard, you actually don't even get a crop. So what I used to advocate for for much of my career was about old seeds and all chefs do because it's where the flavor is. It's also where the nutrition is. It's been passed down for generations for a reason. It's because it tasted so good. But I was so, my thinking wasn't right until I met these, I realized my thinking was so often when I met these breeders, there's modern breeders who will take the genetics on the path Everything we covet in this flavor and nutrition and modernize it, which means you bring it up to date and you make it productive. You make it agronomically a strong plant that will produce a very good yield for the farmer that will incentivize the farmer to grow it. And it leaves the purview of a white tablecloth restaurant, which is where I am, and gets out of this idea that the one percenters deserve delicious, nutritious food and democratizes it. and that's why I want to start the company, is democratize these flavors. And the idea that there's yield and cheap food here and nutrition and deliciousness over here and you have to make a choice, it's a false choice. It's absolutely false and we're proving it with each of our seeds. That our yield, yet will it be exactly the yield of the conventional guys? No, and no it won't. But for a little less yield, you get a lot more of everything else and it's a hell of a deal. so that's why we got into the business. It really wasn't to make money, it was just to take these ideas, democratize the flavors and get some funding to do the R&D to do more of it. So, that's why we started it.

You're not a monk, but you're like the Gregor Mendel of flavor. It's a whole different way of thinking about our food, which is using technology and the science of breeding not just to create drought resistant or yield seed producing or insect resistant plants.

To create hedonism. To create deliciousness and flavor.

And as a side effect, you're regenerating the soil, biodiversity, creating increased phytochemical content of the food, which is, from my point of view, food is medicine. You're actually increasing the healing powers of the food and the flavonols, and you're doing it in a way that is.

Sort of a, like you said before.

Sort of like a David and Goliath against big seed companies. Now, I want to go into the seed company thing for a minute because most people don't understand that there's a seed monopoly out there, that the centralization of seed creation and production and the selling of seeds is happening at scale globally and is undermining local farmers and food producers all over the world. And most of them around the world are women and small landholders or farm holders.

What you just said is a front page New York Times story, and I don't know why this, more people. I mean, the, the, the, the seed industry is now consolidated to the point that any new variety of seed that is developed, 68%, 68% is in the hands of three companies. So nearly 70% of the future of our food is in the hands of three companies. Which is Monsanto and, well, Monsanto's just been bought by Bayer.

Yeah.

And there's DuPont and then there's ChemChina. So There's three big players now. I mean, next time we talk, there might be two. But that is a frightening reality because if you do, and I think you should look at seeds as the blueprint for the whole system, then you're talking about these companies controlling the system. It's not just a seed that doesn't taste good or lacks nutrition, whatever. It's a blueprint for how you're supposed to farm. And that's what scares me, is that you roll out everything from the amount of acreage that It should go on the, where it should be grown. You know, forget rotations. It's not, not even that. But that whole, baked all the way to the processor is what we're talking about. That's how baked in it is. That's a monopoly. Don't what, what I find most interesting is that the three companies we just mentioned are not seed companies. They're chemical companies.

Yeah, they're creating seeds to sell their chemicals. Right? Like the, it's what Roundup ready seeds they call it. Yeah.

And what incentive do you have in that scenario to create a strong seed? that doesn't need the chemical intervention. There's none. And that's where it's the David and Goliath story. It's like, that's crazy. And people don't understand that because there's so much mixed messaging and because people don't think of food as seed driven. We think too much of it actually as farm and soil driven, even though, God, we should be thinking more about smaller farms and diversified farms and biodiverse farms and soil and regenerative farms. They're all important, but the seed is the blueprint. for how that stuff gets into play. And that's why I went to the seeds because you can have the best farmer like this guy, Klaus Martins, I was mentioning at the beginning, I went to visit. The best rotations, the most regenerative and biologically diverse soil. If you have a seed that doesn't have the genetics to be expressed, then what are we talking about? It doesn't so that was my interest. But you're right, it's a frightening future if we don't call it to attention.

So how do you see this really new venture, Row 7, starting to challenge the status quo around the centralization of seed production? And how do we help support that?

Well, thank you for the offer, but I don't think they're scared of me. I don't think Monsanto's quaking in the boots that Row 7 or Dan Barber's coming after them because the more I learned about R&D on seeds, it's just so it's why seed companies don't make money, chemical companies make money as seed companies. It's a lost game. But we're going to figure this out. I've got an amazing group of investors who aren't looking at a return on investment. They're looking at what I'm saying is like, disrupt the blueprint. And that's what we're going after. But what it's like, I just actually was just on the phone to them. Just got my mind thinking about this oat breeder that I'm going to visit in North Dakota who's now retiring. He's been breeding those for 50 years. and I said, my first conversation with them was what I say to all these breeders when I go looking for a new variety or new Pursuit. I say, you know, what, what are you throwing away? Because there's always, this has been my, this is 100 true of my conversations. It's always in the thing that's being thrown away is the thing that we want, that I want, that you want and everyone else wants, but that the industry is saying no, like the, like the shrunken butternut squash that would never work because of the skew. It's always the, the, the passion of the breeder that gets stopped at some right because it won't fit into the Paradigm of the industry. So I said, just as I've said a million times, these breeders, what are you throwing away? He said, well, what I keep in my desk drawer is one of the, my favorite oat that I, that I bred in the 60s that was very popular late 60s, 70s. Oh, it's popular. It's out there. He's like, oh, everybody was growing my oat. It's called Paul Oats after the breeder. And I said, oh, what happened? He said, well, the American Heart Association in the 70s determined that because these motes were the highest possible in fatty lipids. They were four times the next grain. I couldn't remember what he said, but it was four times the lipids. And at that point, a fat was a fat, was a fat. And so, and they're a bet. So you have to breed again. So he said, I was still have to breed again. So for the next 30 years, I bred against the lipids. And I was like, I just like, this is an unbelievable story. He's like, yeah, I've been saying it for 30 years. No one's listening to me. Until recently, when they discovered these lipids are actually the things that lower your cholesterol. Right, and then the bladed glucans and all this stuff is just amazing health and nutrition. They're just now, as you know, discovering. And so he said, yeah, so I guess maybe these boats, so he sent them to me. Mark, I dropped on the floor.

They were good.

It's good with like, they were like nothing I've ever tasted. Really?

Yeah.

Yeah, I just had some more this morning. I mean, I just boil them in water and I don't even put anything on them. And they taste like a A bowl of cream and maple sugar.

Wow.

It is unreal. Can you imagine? And it's what hour, no, they're not available in the market because the American Heart Association won't put a stamp on.

A high lipid oat or they didn't.

Well, they put a stamp of approval on Trix. On Trix, yeah, well there you go. So that's what we're up against.

Trix and Puffs.

That's what we're up against.

Our heart of Puffs.

I mean, it just, is it really?

Yes.

Oh my God. They've kind of modified some of that, but they're, it's low in fat. Right, so that's the thing. It's the, I mean, that's, it actually goes to exactly what you started with. this. This is all connected. You can't separate these things and say, like, you know, one nutrient is good for you and that it's just so dis disheartening, especially when you taste, you're like, well, in 1965, oats were the number three grain that we ate in America. Number three. We, we grew actually 29 million acres. 29 million acres. So I said, you know, what's today? So I looked it up. We grow 3 million acres today. Of the 3 million acres, 95 goes to animal feed. Animal. 95. 95%. So we went from a culture that really did eat oats and that farmers, all mostly organic farmers, all in the Midwest because they weren't buying the chemicals even in the 60s, were planting oats because they needed it for the rotations. They broke up disease cycles. They added the kind of, you know, a tilt that they needed for the big crops like wheat and corn. But the market fell apart. And part of the reason the market fell apart, not all, I won't blame it all on the American Heart Association, but part of it is the oats don't taste good. And that's the big issue. Like, you taste these oats, people would just die over this thing. I mean, this great roast doesn't hold up. I mean, it's just, it's just the.

Difference is like cardboard.

I'm jealous. I want to come over for breakfast. Come, come, I'll have you taste this. This is what Rose Evans is working on. It's like to reintroduce this. But how does this get pulled into the market? Because the yield on these is going to be a little bit lower. There's no question about that, in part because no one's been breeding them. in 30 years. So we're talking about 1975 or 1974 yields as the last time we worked on it. So we need someone to pull this through the market and show what I'm just described. And that's where we're turning to chefs. It's like, who better to proselytize and to show this off? Who better than chefs or evangelists? You know, Rene Redzepi said we'd make the best terrorists in the world because we will follow like pit bulls, the evangelism of flavor and we'll do anything for it. And these oats are a good example.

And what we're leading you is to really interesting places, which is soil and seeds and regenerative practices and things that most people don't think of chefs being really interested in.

And they might not be, but that's why I'm no different than the chef who's not an environmentalist who couldn't care about any of these issues because if he or she is dogged about the flavor. They are, they are by definition an environmentalist, an ecologist and a nutritionist. They have to be, if they really are curating great flavor, like true flavor. I'm not talking about Twinkies or tricks or any of that. I'm talking about true flavor. You cannot have a delicious oat or a delicious carrot that has a bad seed grown in bad soil, probably wasn't grown locally, probably wasn't picked at the right moment. None of those things can happen. and have a delicious jaw-dropping experience is impossible. And that's why it's kind of a soothsayer flavor.

And sort of what's beautiful is it, is it when you focus on hedonism.

It solves the world's problem. It gets people healthier, fixes the soil, that's the ticket to this movement. That's how the ticket to this movement. What other movement requires you to be hedonistic and greedy? The environmental movement asks you to give up everything. Religion asks you to give up. I mean, there's any movement Movement, it's always a sacrifice to get to the fulfillment. But in this case, it's hedonism A to Z. It's very powerful.

So in other words, the recipe starts at the breeding of the.

I think so. I think if we were to not look at the breeding and the selection, we're missing a huge part of it. For the food system, for the larger foods, look, for the one percenters, we can go back to what our great grandparents were doing. And you will be fed well, there's no question about it. From a sustainability point of view, long term for our children, Children, children, children.

It's not a way to change the food system. Okay, so we've got the old model, which is, you know, this industrial agriculture with breeding plants that have no flavor, no benefit, and destroy the earth and their health. And we have heirloom varieties, but we lost about 75% of the world's heirloom varieties already, which is like, big problem. People don't talk about that, but we talk about animal extinction.

We were the plant extinction. Big problem.

But this row seven concepts really seems radically different. It seems like you're trying to sort.

To not just hold on to the.

Past, but reinvent the future.

Living seed bank. Living seed bank. And not freezing the seeds. We're trying to take the genetics of the past and marry it with the latest technology. I'm not talking about transgenic. I'm not talking about anything that the Monsanto's of the world do. I'm talking about holistic, appropriate technology that's been invented in the last five years, 10 years. It's why we could make the squash from a tasteless water clogged bitter butternut squash into a caramel squash in the span of five years. I mean, that's using appropriate technology, as in the genome is mapped of the squash. So you can predict stuff that our parents or great-grandparents would have taken a lifetime to do if they were lucky. That's the beauty of this. Like we're not, this is not a hearkening back to the past. This is about the pleasures of using technology of the future. nature, but doing it in service to nutrition and food.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. One of the best ways you can support this podcast is by leaving us a rating and review below. Until next time, thanks for tuning in.

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Better and live younger longer.

Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

Healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

Changes, especially when it comes to your.

Don'T forget, there's a way to listen.

Completely ad free with Hyman plus on Apple podcasts. You can enjoy every episode without any breaks.

Just open Apple podcasts and tap try.

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