Flavour always wins. What's the role of chefs in the regenerative transition? And why did this chef start a deceit company? And he feels pretty optimistic about the future of the food system. Welcome to another episode of 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 investing region egg or find the link below. Thank you. So welcome to another episode today with chef and co-owner of Blue Heel in Manhattan, New York and Blue Heel at Stone Barns, plus the co-founder of Row 7 Seeds. Welcome chef Dan Barber.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Nice to be here.
SPEAKER_00And to start with a personal, I mean, you've shared it before, but I'm wondering if there is more to that story when you saw the potential of regenerative agriculture, where soil came really into your life. Was it a moment or was that more like a longer, slowly evolving journey?
SPEAKER_01There is a moment. that that was a kind of before and after moments. I think the thing that came to mind is that I was standing at a farm in upstate New York owned and run by a man named Klaus Martens. And Klaus had been supplying me with wheat for many years that we ground, we milled into bread, into flour for bread. And it was extraordinary. We made bread that I had become quite well known for. And I had set out to write a book about farm to table cooking. And I really was starting the book with the extraordinary wheat that I milled from Klaus's growing practices. And so I I decided to end up visiting him and learning the recipe for why his wheat was so spectacular. And I arrived and stood in the middle of the field, and it took about, I don't know, 30 seconds for me to realize that of the 2,000 acres of his farm, very little of it was actually in wheat. I saw some beautiful wheat growing, but I also saw tons of other crops, rye and buckwheat and millet and barley, and they were all timed in this meticulous way. rotation, meticulously timed rotation that provided soil fertility for his major crops, one of which being weed, another being corn. But the image was just so immediate for me. It was like I was being touted as a sort of leading farm-to-table chef, and here I was only supporting a tiny slice of the farm. And what I learned is that all these other crops that Klaus was growing that I managed and the dozens of others that I saw and learned about that day were there to provide the fertility, the diversity, and ultimately the fertility that allowed for the wheat crop to be so successful.
SPEAKER_00And
SPEAKER_01tasty. Yeah, well, successful in my world was really tasty. But yes, the fertility allowed the wheat to express those flavors that were so extraordinary. But I wasn't supporting the whole farm. I wasn't supporting the health of the soil. I was supporting the king crop, the wheat crop, which I was embarrassed about. So I went back and I really changed my entire cooking, not so much philosophy, but I deepened how I thought about my cooking and how my menu should set out to support the whole farm. We talk about nose to tail of an animal. We really talk about the nose to tail of an entire farm. And that was the lesson of my time with Klaus and a deepening of understanding of what it means to be organic, which is an organism. And in the context of deliciousness, which I think is truly rooted in soil, and I know it is from my experience, what enables that to happen is a farmer who is practicing the kind of diversity that allows fertility to thrive and gives you a crop like the wheat that I was tasting. The irony is that, and it's not a nice irony, is that Klaus's other crops, dozens or so other crops that he was growing, to get that fertility. he didn't really have a market for. So the rye and the buckwheat and the barley were mostly thrown into bag feed for animals, for which Klaus made pennies on the dollar and made his money on the wheat. So it's also a lesson in not just supporting the whole farm, but in why organic agriculture is so expensive.
SPEAKER_00Because the one cash crop has to cover for everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's the cash crop has to cover everybody else, all the other crops that nobody wants to eat. And then that got me, and that's what got me to really change my book. I ended up writing a book called The Third Plate about the whole farm because you can't be sustainable without a diet that supports the entirety of it. Then you end up realizing that cuisines, the history of cuisines, is just about that. It's about a pattern of eating that is rooted in diversity that gives you soil health, that gives you flavors and diversity that is to be celebrated. That's the lesson that I came away with from
SPEAKER_00And you created, and I will definitely link the book below in the show notes, and you created your famous rotational risotto.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And did you see that being taken by other chefs? Do you see that as a role of chefs to rediscover that what we have done based on the landscape, what a landscape can provide, which is changing over time now as we have changed the landscapes quite dramatically? Do you see that as your role and potentially other roles of other chefs in this, let's say, regenerative transition? I
SPEAKER_01think so. I think it's the role of all chefs, yeah, is to support what is truly regenerative. That's kind of the point of good cooking, you know, and it gets lost on us sometimes. I think it's being rediscovered.
SPEAKER_00Has it changed in that moment, since that moment in that field, which is, I don't know, eight, ten years ago, maybe? Have you seen shifts around you for the good and the bad?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what I've seen is the culture of food changed dramatically in the last ten years, sure. I mean, look, when I started Blue Hill, you had to have certain things on the menu, you know, the menu Anyways, you didn't have a lot of choice if you wanted to be a high-end restaurant. Today, the definition of a high-end restaurant is to celebrate those crops that are grown locally. Actually, even more than that, The best restaurants in the world now are about a menu that is filled with ingredients that you can't get anywhere else. And what the definition of that is hyperlocal. The whole shift in food culture has enabled or led by chefs has been about distinctiveness of place. And that's about ecology. And that's about celebrating your environment in a way that can be expressed through crops. And cooking is celebrating that. So that's a very positive development. And it's a rarefied part of the food culture because it's white tablecloth restaurants.
SPEAKER_00Do you see it getting out of the restaurant as well? Has it been, or if not, how can we make sure it goes beyond that table where we eat amazingly, we celebrate it, but then it's Saturday evening? And then on Monday, we do something completely else. How do we get it to the kitchen of the daily night?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, I do think that happens. I do think you bleed into the everyday food culture. It just happens slowly. And unfortunately, as you just mentioned at the top of this hour, We don't have a lot of time here. We have to move this along in a way. I think chefs play a big role in it because chefs pursue flavor and true flavor really only comes from good soil. That's the end of story.
SPEAKER_00Do you see that? Because I see a lot of people, especially at technology conferences or even in general, that throw at me, but why don't we just grow everything in vertical farms? I see the efficiency or let's get in some GMOs or some lab-grown meat. And I'm not looking for an answer there because that's a whole different discussion. But what do you say to people when they throw that on the table basically to you like why bother with soil so much
SPEAKER_01why bother with soil so much is again i'm my shiv is flavor and so i know that you can only get that the people who argue that you can get that from hydroponics or from multi-story growing facilities are quite wrong and what i've discovered is that there's so much to discover this idea that we actually know what's happening in soil or that you know what to be learned about soil health and the potential for human health and flavors. is something that our great-grandparents did. It's preposterous. It's laughable.
SPEAKER_00We
SPEAKER_01know so little.
SPEAKER_00What is the latest thing you discovered about soil that really surprised you?
SPEAKER_01I've been talking to a plant breeder, a corn breeder, who has been breeding a type of corn that fixes nitrogen on its own. Wow. There is a wild variety of corn in Mexico that was discovered many years ago that has this ability. But he's been breeding for it. So he's been taking those genetics and actually selecting for it. So he's got a corn plant that, I mean, this is revolutionary. He doesn't have to take you through it. I mean, I think you understand, but I just want to make sure everyone who's listening understands it. Yeah, well, just in America, we have 180 million acres of corn and soybean rotation. 100% of those rotations are based on fertilizers. Of those fertilizers, 70% of that accounts for nitrogen, which is injected into the soil in a chemical form to make the plant grow faster and more robust. The consequences of that on carbon release into the atmosphere, on polluting water, on association in waterways all the way down to Mexico and the Gulf of Mexico is extraordinary. The effects on bird life, I mean, on and on. You know, it's hard to pinpoint one reason for a catastrophe. It's so vast.
SPEAKER_00The amount of acres is just, and the amount of applied stuff.
SPEAKER_01The amount of damage is extraordinary. And there's a lot of reasons for it. But it's hard to not argue that nitrogen addition two crops isn't in the top one or two. And when you talk about corn, you're really talking about the two evils, this monoculture of corn and nitrogen. So that's the background. And here we are with a breeder no one's ever heard of in the middle of the country who's breeding a corn variety that fixes its own nitrogen. It doesn't need any nitrogen. So he's showing me a picture of his corn grown organically without any addition but very healthy soil. So he's done all the rotations like that farmer Klaus did when I was watching him in the field to lock and load the soil with the kind of fertility that can really give corn its boost. But also the corn fixes his own nitrogen and he was growing it next to a literally 15 feet away from corn plants that were fed the requisite amount of nitrogen. And his growth was almost exactly the same as the nitrogen additions.
SPEAKER_00And the taste. Well,
SPEAKER_01it's interesting you say that because I cannot wait for the harvest, which is coming in three weeks. And this is a feed corn, but I still am excited, very excited to taste it. But the reason I'm telling you all this, because we started by saying, you know, we know nothing about soil. And the reason I'm saying that is because what he has discovered himself is fascinating. What he was explaining is that it's not that you're simply selecting a corn plant that can fix its own nitrogen, because that in and of itself is a revolution okay that in and of itself if we had the mindset the techno guys that you were talking to at your conferences you If you could explain just the biological opportunity of that is so extraordinary and so exciting that in and of itself, it's like, you know, Jeff Bezos going to space. That's a whole thing. But let me tell you what I really got excited about. What I really got excited about is the only way the corn fixes nitrogen from the air naturally is because of soil biology. And what he's discovered is that at the rhizosphere, which is where the root system is in the soil, there is through this corn plant an injection literally an injection of bacteria and he's watched it on film where it comes out of the roots of the corn plant into the soil community, microbial community. And what he's saying is that, look, this plant will literally feed like a sugar syrup into the soil, but you have to have the right community.
SPEAKER_00To reply.
SPEAKER_01To reply back. So it's a coalescing of what is literally ejected from the corn plant into this rhizosphere. The biological community is eating each other. They're cohabitating and that environment needs to be Correct. Because otherwise the plant won't, it won't go back up into the plant. So, right. So he's saying, yes, it's all, yes, this plant is amazing, but actually it's only amazing because of the soil. And what the potential to, and this opens up this whole other area of investigation, which is what is the biological potential of a soil community that is truly healthy? Well, nobody's doing that. Nobody's doing that.
SPEAKER_00What's the taste potential or the biomass potential of a landscape?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's, so that's, okay. So that's what I'm getting at is, and what I wanted to show you a picture of was the corn fed to chickens from this natural fix. And what you would see is a picture of a yoke that is so orange. It looks like the setting sun, you know, at seven o'clock in Hawaii. It is so bright. I've never seen anything like it. And that's
SPEAKER_00you almost think it's fake. Like somebody played with it.
SPEAKER_01I thought it was fake. He showed me all these pictures of it. I could not believe it. And, you know, now not to get too philosophical about it, but it's like. Please do. But what it gets you to, and you have to get philosophical because it's so, you have to be reverent. Because it's life. Yeah. It's kind of what this goes to. It's like when you talk to techno guys, what is always missing is just a reverence. Because technological driven anything, and especially agriculture, is actually compared to what I just described, is so simplistic. It is so A to B. Like what excites me about talking to this guy. and many other even soil scientists that I talk to is if they all come back to the reference it's because they don't know what's going on they really don't they just like this is not been studied near enough we spend our money going up to space and we don't spend our money going down
SPEAKER_00we know more about the soil on Mars than we know about our own
SPEAKER_01yeah right and the reference is the sense of like this is the most complex biology imaginable and we don't have a language to excite people about biology we have a language to excite people about technology because that's you know that's the Steve Jobs
SPEAKER_00we do it's the language of taste it's the language of flavor
SPEAKER_01well but I that would be my argument is that the only way to get people to be excited about biology is to taste it because I think you can I think when the biology is right and here's the reverence part
SPEAKER_00and we're starting to measuring it and you're doing that with Joe Clapperton and I mean they're starting to come the technology piece is coming in this case to help to measure the nutrients
SPEAKER_01right and I think what it ends up being is a gift that flavor is a gift and then what that chicken is saying or the egg is saying to you is you've grown that corn correctly and I'm now going to reward you with an egg that's going to blow your mind and then you get a flavor like that and it becomes revelatory and that soil talking to you it just speaks in a language through that kind of flavor and obviously the health benefits you look at the egg it's like you look healthy I mean you feel healthier just looking at it you know it's not like you know what I mean it's like there's so much beta carotene running through that thing it probably sets you up for life. So to me, it's just, it's so exciting. It's so exciting. I get so frustrated. It's because we know so little. And yet when you try and explain this to people, it's like biology, it's like, it's so complex and it's inefficient because look, to feed the biological community is inefficient. It takes a lot. A, we don't know a lot, but B, what we do know is that you can't grow one thing of one variety over and over again. Technology allows you to do that. So all of a sudden you're just frustrated. And the response back is, well, we have a population that's one third hungry and a population that's exploding and don't you want to feed people? And, you know, oh God. So anyway, you get all tripped up with that stuff.
SPEAKER_00And so if we're in that phase of knowing so little, which is extremely exciting, I think, and we're in the first innings of this discovery process, what would you tell to entrepreneurs listening, but also investors listening that are excited, that read your book, read other books, have visited farms and are ready to invest or ready to work in the space, like where should they, without giving investment advice, obviously, but where should they focus? Where should they get to work if they're not a chef?
SPEAKER_01You don't want investment advice from me, but I would say that if you are an investor and you're looking at the ag space, your horizon should not be on five-year horizons. Your horizon should be on 20 and 30 years. And if your horizon is on 20 and 30 years, I bet with biology every time, there's no question in my mind that as we go down this road of technology, of replacing the cow with impossible burgers and doing all the hydroponics that we're doing, we are going to discover that the health consequences of this are extraordinary. And there is going to be a rush back to real food. And we need to be ready. And if you're ready, if you're an investor, you are going to do quite well at the end of the game. I think it's a lot, you know, it reminds me of when I was growing up, I just thought of this. When I was growing up, you know, everyone was eating margarine. I don't know if you're a enough to buy me
SPEAKER_00margarine in the Netherlands it was a thing yeah Unilever became quite big with this stuff
SPEAKER_01in the US to eat butter in the 70s was like laughable it was like well we've you know scientists have discovered fat is bad something that's fat's bad and that can be so much more healthy and you know is a fine substitute for butter and there's this woman Joan Gussow who's one of my favorite nutritionist scholars and she has this quote that says I never switched to margarine because I always trusted Cal is more than scientists. That's what I would, if I was an investor, that's what I would look at. I would look at biological systems and the health of animals and humans as much more trustworthy than what science can do. Technological science, anyway, can do. And that's not specific advice for an investor, but that would be my overall.
SPEAKER_00It's a direction, yeah. And what do you believe to be true about regenerative agriculture? You've been in this space for quite a bit and regenerative food systems that others don't. So where are you contrarian? And this definitely comes from John Kemp.
SPEAKER_01My contrarian aspect to of it is that I bristle at what is being called regenerative because it is always about doing less damage to the earth and to the environment, to soil health. Always less. It's we are a regenerative farm because we're using 40% less nitrogen fertilizer. We are a regenerative farm because we cut down pesticides by 80%. We are a regenerative farm because our water use is now 50% of what it was 10 years ago. Those are always the data points. We're less bad than we were 10 years ago. And to be regenerative, the true definition of it.
SPEAKER_00If there is one.
SPEAKER_01If there is. Well, I think we should say there is. And truly, to regenerate is to make something better.
SPEAKER_00And we don't know how good looks like, or how better looks like. We know how better looks like, we don't know where it goes, where it ends.
SPEAKER_01Well, we don't think of agriculture in terms of improving ecological functioning, ecological systems in the environment. We look at it always in, let's do less damage. And if you want to improve an environment, then you go to wild, you go to protected space. And that's the American experience. We built the national parks. That was to say... Big
SPEAKER_00fence.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're going to put a fence around it and... Move
SPEAKER_00everybody who was in it by chance.
SPEAKER_01Right. If you want to visit that, you can experience what real nature is. Otherwise, you can shit all over the earth. Otherwise, and as long as we have these protected spaces. But what if we thought about agriculture really in an indigenous context, which is why history, agriculture history is so important because in that context, you think about systems that were in place that improved the environment for where food was grown. And that is not only possible, it's absolutely necessary to feed the world in the future. So regenerative, if you're truly regenerative, you are leaving your farmland in better condition every year than you had it the year before. And that, I do think that's possible. And for your neighbors and for your children and forever, you're passing the farm on. That should be the responsibility of agriculture. And that kind of ethic is not in the American ethic of growing food.
SPEAKER_00And you mentioned asking financial advice from you probably is not a good idea, but let's say overnight you're no longer a chef, but you become in charge of quite a large fund, let's say a billion dollars. Maybe I have to increase it to 10 billion now because of inflation and billions of flying around. But let's say you have a lot of resources. What would you invest in? What would you prioritize? I'm not asking to the dollar amount, but what would you prioritize in terms of investments? And it can be a very long-term fund.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, grass-fed beef, probably. If you're going for the big dog in America, I'd go for grass-fed beef or grass-fed milk. Because the environmental impact on grain-fed meat and grain-fed cows for milk is so extraordinary. We just talked about 180 million acres of corn and soybeans. 75% of that's going to feed a cow.
SPEAKER_00And even the breeder you just mentioned is growing feed for cows. I mean, you're going to eat it, you're going to use it, but you're going to be very small in his rotation, unfortunately. That's very right. That's very right. And if you could change one thing overnight in the global food system, honestly, you have a magic wand and you no longer are in charge of your fund, unfortunately. But if you could change one thing overnight, what would that be?
SPEAKER_01In the global food system, if I could change one...
SPEAKER_00Could be American specifically if you want it as well. No,
SPEAKER_01no. One thing is I would relocalize everything. That's where the best food comes from. I'm still a chef when you give me that example. So if I'm still a chef, I'm still after the best flavor. And the best flavor comes from micro regions. And so if I have a wand that I can wave It would be to reinvigorate the localized food economies of the world, which, you know, today they're still there. It's not like I'm talking about 50 years ago. I mean, today, 90% of food grown in the world is grown on five acres or less. We do not yet have the westernized conception of how food is grown. We are exporting that idea to the rest of the world and it's a disaster, but it's not too late. It's really not. I'm not saying that to be positive because there's not a lot positive to say about about industrial, about, you know, the state of agriculture these days. But it is to say the reality is, you know, we're still, we are at an inflection point and there is still a road to take that could be a lot more beneficial to the environment, to our health and to the pleasure of eating.
SPEAKER_00And what's the role of seeds just to wrap up? When you started the seed company and I've eaten the pumpkin actually once. Oh yeah. I haven't followed it too closely. Where are you now? And what's exciting on the seed part, apart from the corn part, which is super exciting. Anything else beyond that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I'm having conversations with breeders like the guy I was just talking about, who are looking at selecting seeds for flavor and for nutrient density. And it turns out that when you select seeds for flavor, you are automatically selecting seeds that give you great health potential nutrient density, and most often are beneficial to the soil microbial community. It's very interesting, those three things. When do we ever have the opportunity to strike, you know, a bullseye with one thing in three, strike three things in one stroke. And seeds is an opportunity really to improve the pleasure of food, the nutrition of food and the environment all in one little seed. And that's why I really started the company with the potential of it. Today, nearly 65% of the future of our food supply, which is seeds, is in the hands of four companies. Four. 50 years ago, there were 10,000 companies and most seeds were true. They were not sold. Today, four companies over 60, it's between 60 and 65%. That's depressing. I want to add one more level of depression. The four companies that own nearly 65% of our food supply are all chemical companies. They are not seed companies. They own seed companies. They own multiple seed companies, but their overarching company is chemical companies and is a chemical company, is a multinational chemical company. So that means that that they are selecting and breeding seeds that are meant for a chemical intervention, a pesticide or a fertilizer or an herbicide.
SPEAKER_00And definitely not something that takes nitrogen out of the air by itself.
SPEAKER_01Why? They wouldn't make money. They wouldn't make money. So they make their money with the intervention. And that, if I was an investor, I'd get the hell away from that because that's not going to last.
SPEAKER_00And do you see that since you started, have you seen any other signs? I want to end on a high note. And I'm not super depressing, but you've been working on this for a while. Have you seen any other small early signs? Just as I mean, we start looking at soil and you see things. Have you seen the same excitement starting in seeds?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I do. Yeah, people like you, people like you who are asking these kind of questions. I do. I see a lot of people asking these kind of questions of this is not right. We're not heading in the right direction. And are we forgetting the wisdom of the past and marrying that wisdom with potential technologies that can truly bring us more delicious and nutritious food. It's very possible. It's there. And so people like you, people like scientists like Jill Clapperton, they're breeders who I'm talking to almost every day who are out there coming out of the woodwork. So there is a definite, and then there's young people. There's young people in America anyway. I don't know as much about the rest of the world, but in America, there is just a swelling of interest, enthusiasm, and a refugia. They're the highly processed food companies. There's a wholesale rejection of it, actually. And when you talk to these food company executives, which I do, you hear from them very clearly say...
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we had Nestlé on that clearly was scared because they saw people changing, literally changing in the last two years their buying habits.
SPEAKER_01It's everywhere. And all of them are saying, if we're going to be in business in 10 years, we need to really change course. And the system is not built to change course. So it's going to be very challenging, but I think the groundswell of attention that's happening is happening because I'm younger people and I think it's being driven by pleasure and taste. It's not just people wanting to save the environment because I don't think at the end of the day that drives enough people. No, it's not. It's the pleasure that you get from really good food and people are willing to spend a little more for it, but unwilling to support the companies that don't support that. If I were an investor, just from a brand perspective, I would not be heavily investing in a company that is not focused on that next generation because once this generation that I'm talking about has kids forget it I mean you think it's bad you think it's interesting now it'll be really interesting when they have kids you know once you have kids you're so conscious of what you're eating and what they're eating and it's another ball game so I do actually you know I'm pretty cynical about everything I'm pretty I feel very positive about the future of where food could go I to your point I hope it happens quickly enough
SPEAKER_00thank you so much i know you need to run i will wrap up thank you man thanks for your good work great questions thank you so much and good luck with the seeds and everything else if you found the investing in regenerative agriculture and food podcast valuable there are a few simple ways you can use to support it number one rate and review the podcast on your podcast app that's the best way for other listeners to find the podcast and it only takes a few seconds number two share this podcast on social media or email it to your friends and colleagues number three if If this podcast has been of value to you and if you have the means, please join my membership community to help grow this platform and allow me to take it further. You can find all the details on gumroad.com slash investing region egg or in the description below. Thank you so much and see you at the next podcast.