Episode 104: Introducing Integrity Grown™ with John Kempf

Hi, friends, this is John. Welcome to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. I'm here right now with a special episode that is just me talking to you about something that's very important to me. The launch of our Integrity Grown Regenerative Ag Verification. But before I talk about the Regenerative Ag Verification, the new brand called Integrity Grown, I first want to say thank you, thank you to all of our listeners. I was surprised last week when our team showed me that we had reached the point where we were number one in Earth Sciences on the Apple Podcast charts. And that wasn't something that I expected to achieve quite this quickly. So I want to say thank you to all of our listeners and everyone who has helped reach us, help us reach this point. We've had a lot of amazing guests and I want to thank you for all the interaction, the feedback and everything that you do for us. It's really all of us in this together that create the better future that we desire. So let's talk about Integrity Grown. We released Integrity Grown as a regenerative verification brand just this week. And this is, this has been a conversation that's been a long time coming. Something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about that our team at Advancing Eco Agriculture has spent a lot of time thinking about. Our team first suggested that we develop some type of quality verification brand over a decade ago. And I have been reluctant. I've been reluctant for a number of different reasons. One of the reasons I was reluctant is because I have a strong desire for a regenerative verification brand to be inclusive, to not exclude people. And I saw what happened with the organic certification process. Through a process, the way that history unraveled and the way things all played out. There came a point in time where with organic certification, there was a very distinct in group and an out group us versus them. It created polarization. And this is something that we need to. This is something that we need to avoid with a regenerative verification standard. Because if our goal, if our desire is to have a significant large scale impact, then we need to have something that can bring people along and that doesn't polarize people and doesn't create an in group versus an out group. For those reasons, I was hesitant about developing a verification standard at any point. But as time went on, I soon realized that we need to create some type of definition and a verification for regenerative agriculture or it will be greenwashed into oblivion. And so there are several organizations in this space who are doing very good work. But we believed that There was an opportunity for us to add some very important pieces into the global discussion, the conversation about what a verification standard should look like and the ideal that we should strive for. And Integrity Grown is our vision for that ideal. So I want to talk about Integrity Grown. This is obviously just a very early stage pathway, early stage step on the pathway that we're on towards a regenerative verification. Rather than speaking in a lot of detail about what Integrity Grown is right now, I want to speak towards the vision of what it is that we want to become. Integrity Grown is being described right now as a regenerative verification standard for cotton. But let's be very clear, we are starting with cotton because we have a specific need there that needed to be met and filled. But the Integrity Grown standard is to be inclusive of all crops and even of animal products eventually as well. So what is the vision for Integrity Grown? What's the thought process that has gone into it? What is really behind it, and what do we want Integrity Grown to become First, Integrity Grown. The word choice is very deliberate and very intentional. We are seeking to verify and to validate integrity of three major pieces. The integrity of harvest outcomes, what is the quality of the product that we're actually harvesting, the integrity of the farming process that was used to produce those outcomes, and lastly, the integrity of the supply web relationships. So let's talk about each of those three pieces. First. Integrity of outcomes. When we think about integrity of outcomes, there are two different types of quality outcomes that we're looking for. The first is whatever defines quality. Quality is obviously defined in different crops. If we're talking about cotton, then there are fiber quality components and so forth. So there is both the presence of quality. In some crops, this is defined as nutritional quality or nutritional integrity. Over the last several years, I have deliberately chosen to move away from using the phrase of nutrient density, because nutrient density could simply mean that you have very highly concentrated levels of some mineral elements or some phytonutrients. So nutrient density is kind of associated with nutrient concentration. But in fact, the healthiest plants, the healthiest crops may not be. They may not have the highest concentration of nutrients, but instead they may have the best balance of nutrients. So for this reason, I've shifted away from using the term nutrient density to instead speak about nutritional integrity. And in the same manner, we also speak about microbiome integrity. The foundational pieces of immune system function for plants, for livestock, for people, for all organisms really boils down to those two fundamental pieces, nutritional integrity and microbiome integrity. So when we think about validating the integrity of outcomes. That means measuring the harvest, whether that is grain, produce, nuts, wines, any type of plant harvest, or even livestock, to define and to describe what is nutritional integrity. And perhaps at some point in the future for some of these harvests, we may also be describing microbiome integrity, but that is a vision for the future. The second aspect of harvest integrity integrity of outcomes is, is freedom from toxins. Toxins can mean many different things. It might mean molds and mycotoxins. It might mean toxic elements like cadmium and lead and nickel above certain concentration thresholds. And it may also mean pesticides and herbicides. And this is where using an outcome based approach rather than a process approach is, I believe, so important. It's fundamental to the future of regeneration and getting large scale adoption and how we think about and how collectively as a community we can bring everyone along into this space. I believe that we have really missed the mark in the way that we think about our current policy and enforcement regime in thinking about food safety. Organic certification when you think about the various certifications we have, food safety certification, organic certification, they are very much process certifications. And we all know that sometimes the process can be followed, but we can still produce less than ideal outcomes. But the inverse is that very frequently when we verify the process, the process becomes so onerous that it prevents small scale people from moving in, from participating as part of the overall supply chain. One of the pieces that Joel Salatin has pointed out is from a. From a food processing, a livestock processing perspective, if a chicken is processed and can be tested and verified to be clean, it should be permitted to be sold. The fact that it got to be clean in the kitchen sink isn't as relevant as the fact that it can be measured and verified to be clean. And this is also where organic certification with the tools that were available at the time the approach evolved to be a negative process certification rather than an outcomes certification. Even though the original organic pioneers had the intent that organic certification should be a process by which soil health is improved and by which organic matter is built, as things evolved, we have eventually arrived in a very different place where organic certification, when I use the terms a negative process certification, that means it is a process as a certification that you do not do a long list of things. And of course that doesn't necessarily correspond to producing high quality outcomes of nutritional integrity and so forth. It simply corresponds to a supposed toxin free in the sense that toxins being defined as synthetic pesticides and the prescribed elements or prescribed ingredients of Organic agriculture. But as we learned, there's been some papers published just recently finding that they are finding significant toxin loads, significant loads of pesticides in organically certified fruits and vegetables, where these soils in some cases have been organic for years or decades, but they have had historical pesticide loads that were not degraded and were not metabolized by the soil because there wasn't enough biological activity to accomplish that. So what we are proposing for the future of integrity grown is that we measure the outcome. Let's actually measure the amount of glyphosate or of any other pesticide that is being applied in the crop itself. And what this does, it changes the nature of the conversation. All of a sudden, I'm going to use glyphosate as an example because it's a very hotly debated topic. All of a sudden, it changes the nature of the conversation to the point where we're no longer saying you can't apply any glyphosate. Instead, the conversation is, if you apply glyphosate, that means you need to also have such microbially active soil that it can metabolize and degrade and break down all that glyphosate before you harvest the crop, so that your crop harvest levels are below the thresholds. And so all of a sudden it is no longer a binary, yes, no conversation that glyphosate is permissible or is not permissible. It instead is a verification of the outcome of the quality of the foodstuffs and the feedstuffs that we are producing, which is ultimately what all of us really care about. The third piece in verifying the integrity of outcomes is verifying soil health improvement. Verifying. There are a number of different pieces that can be used to verify and measure this. But when we look at aggregate stability and depth of aggregate stability, depth of and speed of water, infiltration, et cetera, looking at all the various characteristics that define soil health, we need to not just verify harvest integrity and freedom from toxins, nutritional integrity, and so forth, but we need to also verify the ecosystem benefits that we are actually improving soil health, improving water quality, etc. The second major area, verifying the integrity of the farming process, we need to consider the context of practices that are less than ideal. The ultimate vision would be to get to a place where we are verifying outcomes, the integrity of outcomes, and minimizing the need to verify process. So I want to be very clear that there is a need for us, because of a lack of data and a lack of knowledge for nutritional integrity and some of those pieces for specific crops. There is a need for us to verify process on some crops and some parameters for us right now. But in the future, the ideal would be to minimize the verification of process and instead focus on verification of outcomes. But for now there is a need for us to verify process in some ways. And here is where we need to be nuanced and considered the context There are a number of practices that are less than ideal. They are sub optimal for different environments. If you were to propose tilling the soil in areas that are susceptible to wind erosion or to water erosion, which is a lot of areas, there's of course variation on soil type. That is a practice that is less than ideal. But if you are growing carrots or potatoes, some level of tillage is not optional. And so we need to consider the context of the crop context and the farming context of some practices that that would result in a very low score in other ecosystems not having a similar negative weight when they are simply not optional. The same can be said of glyphosate applications. In some contexts they can almost be considered necessary until other tools are developed. And in other contexts there are pathways around them, there are alternatives available. So this is, we consider in the integrity grown verification process, we are considering tillage on a spectrum. So it's not black, white. Yes. No, it is on a spectrum and within the context of the crop, the farm, the ecosystem and so forth. The same is true of fertilizers and pesticides. We are considering fertilizers, growth regulators, pesticides, et cetera, et cetera, on a spectrum and within a context. And this is a spectrum. And the way that we're approaching this right now, this is a spectrum that can have not just positive, but it can also go negative. So this is, I think, an important distinction. I'm not aware of any other verification processes that are using this, that the use, continued use of some fertilizers and pesticides can have a negative effect on the process verification score. And lastly, the other significant distinction of verifying the integrity of the farming process is incorporating livestock. Incorporating livestock is also considered on a spectrum and in context because while we, I think all of us would generally agree that adding livestock to an ecosystem would be an ideal that we should strive for, for some crops, and in some contexts it is simply not possible to do so. From a food safety perspective, if we're growing spinach or salad greens, then we cannot have livestock in those ecosystems, at least not for the period while that crop is growing. In some geographic regions where a lot of these crops are grown, there are no livestock in the region to incorporate or even to incorporate livestock products. And that would not be ideal anyway from a food safety perspective. So again, incorporating livestock is considered on a spectrum and within the specific crop and farming context. Those are the first two major pieces of how we are approaching and thinking about what our vision is for integrity. Grown is the first, verifying and most importantly focusing on verifying the integrity of outcomes being nutritional and microbiome integrity, freedom from toxins and soil health improvement. Those three major pieces second, verifying the integrity of the farming process and considering these pieces that are considered to have a negative practice, to have a negative impact, such as tillage and fertilizer applications, and incorporating livestock on a spectrum and within the specific farming context. And that leaves the third piece. This third piece is aspirational and inspirational and that is verifying the integrity of the supply web relationships. This is a topic I've been speaking about for the last several years. And so I'm going to take some time to really explain the thinking and the thought process behind this. I am of the persuasion that in order for us to have an authentic conversation about regeneration, the most fundamental foundational piece that needs to be regenerated is the capacity for stewardship. We need to regenerate the capacity for stewardship. In other words, we need to regenerate the capacity for people to be on the landscape and have an adequate presence to engage with the landscape in a caring, loving, stewardship manner. In order for that to happen, we first need to bring more people back into the landscape. So when I think about regeneration from a first principles, foundational perspective, regeneration is fundamentally about regenerating relationships at all levels. Regenerating relationships between soil, microbes and plants, between plants and livestock, between livestock and the landscape, between people, between human organizations, and ultimately between the producer organizations such as farmers and the buyers who are buying from them. CPG companies, the supply web, both the supply web on the off take side as well as the supply web that is bringing inputs, whatever they might be, into the farming operation. And we need to pay close attention to the relationships, these human relationships and organizational relationships in the supply web in order to be able to facilitate regeneration on a significant scale. So when you think about regenerating a relationship, the question is, what's the definition of a regenerated relationship? What's the definition of a degraded relationship? And a degraded relationship is a relationship that is extractive, that is selfish, that is transactional, that is a win lose relationship. One of the participants is winning at the Expense of the other, a healthy relationship, or you could say in the lexicon we're using for this conversation, a regenerated relationship is a relationship that is symbiotic and synergistic and collaborative and win, win instead of win, lose. What we really need is we need regenerative verified supply chains. And as a part of the regenerative verification process for supply chains, there needs to be this fair trade component where there is the assurance that in the process of purchasing the goods the farmer is producing that are integrity verified, that nutritional integrity and that are free from toxins, the farmer is actually being compensated for producing quality because that is the only way we have of bringing more people back into the landscape. We don't have enough people right now. We do not have enough people in rural communities to engage in the caring, loving relationships that are needed and to be good stewards of the landscape and to be good stewards of ecosystems at scale. So the pathway that is needed to bring more people back into the rural communities, into rural landscapes is to be able to compensate them well. They need to be compensated for the quality that they are producing and for the ecosystem services that they are providing. And the reasonable pathway to do that is through the supply chains, through the supply webs. What we really need is we need regenerative verified or regenerative certified supply chains that have this fair trade component. Without this consideration, without this aspect, we are Once more placing 100% of the responsibility on the farmer. It is the farmer and the grower who's completely responsible for the burden of verification and certification and for ensuring that everything is met with no parallel commitment coming from the supply chain. So once more we set up the framework for this to inherently be an extractive relationship and a win lose relationship where the farmer bears the burden of responsibility and carries all the risk, but it is the supply chain further upstream that receives most of the rewards. This is not acceptable. And if we take this approach, I do not believe we will be successful at getting the large scale adoption that is necessary to have regenerative ag become mainstream over the course of the next decade or two. The ultimate vision for integrity grown, and this is something that we will need to grow into. The ultimate vision for integrity grown is to have regenerative verified supply chains with the farmers as a part of that supply chain, a foundational piece of that supply chain. But they are a piece of the whole. When we verify the whole supply web, that there is a fair trade component for the growers themselves. And it is for this reason that we are particularly pleased and excited to be able to launch Integrity grown for the 2024 growing season with citizens of humanity and the cotton growers that that they are working with. Because citizens of humanity has demonstrated this type of collaborative symbiotic relationship with significant financial incentives and rewards and support for the growers during the transition process. So if you have any questions, if you would like to participate, if you would like to become verified through this process as a farm, this is where we're starting right now, as we are in the process of verifying farms, but we're also intending to verify entire supply chains. If you would like to learn more or to participate in the process, please reach out to us at the advancing Ecoag website, advancingecoag.com, we have a page for Integrity Grown Up. We will link that here in the show Notes. You can also find it simply by searching for it online. Please sign up, send us your contact information. We will be in touch with you. And I'm quite excited by the possibility and the possible future that can evolve with this verification standard. I've been really inspired by the vision of organizations like Blue Blanc COR in France and others where they have been able to pay farmers a premium for producing higher quality with verified measured outcomes and yet maintain food prices at the retail store shelf and get significant wide scale adoption. Pierre Vail told me years ago that they have been able to achieve 40% of the total supply chain for animal products on the retail store shelf. And when we think about when we think about the outcomes that this verification process can lead to, this is a win for ecosystems, it's a win for the environment, a win for farmers, it is a win for retailers, it's a win for CPG companies. There are no downsides to this approach of verifying the quality of outcomes as long as we all contribute and all participate. That is my vision for the future and it is something that I believe many of you will rally around, get behind and push forward. So I want to say thank you to all of to everyone who has supported us in this work, who has helped to bring it about, both our team internally at Advancing Eco Agriculture and the advisors and supporters. Thanks for all you do. And let's remember the words of Charles Eisenstein. When we work together and collaborate, there is no question that we can create the better world that our hearts know is possible. Thank you very much.