Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
396 Erin Martin - Making America Healthy Again with food as medicine, not Ozempic
Make America healthy again: is that helping the food-as-medicine movement or hurting it? And why is it so important to focus on quality food as medicine- which means nutrient density and real quality- rather than settling for simply “more fruit and vegetables”? Why would you, if you can, deny people with severe diabetes and lower incomes the best-quality food possible, especially when it has the biggest ripple effect?
Today, a check-in conversation with Erin Martin, one of the leaders advancing the food as medicine movement in the US. It has been an exciting, interesting, and challenging few years — from speaking on the Hill in Washington, to passing a food as medicine act in her home state of Oklahoma (which has some of the worst health crises in the country), to scaling their program of prescribing produce to reverse type 2 diabetes to over 500 patients. But also: politics, making America and children healthy again, a global and local health crisis spiralling out of control, GLP-1 drugs breaking through, and somehow food and regenerative agriculture becoming polarising, a political minefield.
So much to talk about: the first social impact bond, which isn’t a bond but an outcome-based payment scheme, is coming in early 2026 in Oklahoma. And super important: real data is showing massive savings when it comes to prescribing healthy vegetables, fruit, and cooking classes.
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In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
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Make America healthier. Is that helping the food as medicine movement or hurting it? Why is it so important to focus on quality food as medicine? Which means obviously nutrient density, and not to settle for simply more food and vegetables. Because it is the right thing to do. Why would you, if you can, deny people with severe diabetes and lower income the best quality food possible? Plus, this has the biggest ripper effect. Today, a check-in conversation with Erin Martin, one of the leaders in the advancing the food as medicine movement in the US. And wow, it has been an exciting, interesting, and challenging few years since we last talked. From speaking at The Hill in Washington to passing a Food as Medicine Act in her home state of Oklahoma, which has, by the way, one of the worst healthcare crises in the country, scaling their program of providing prescription produce to reverse type 2 diabetes to over 500 patients. But also politics, making America and children healthy again. A global and local health crisis spiraling out of control. GOP1 drugs breaking finally through. And somehow Food and Redemptive Act became polarized and a political minefield. So much success to talk about. The first social impact bond, which isn't really a bond but an outcome-based payment scheme, is coming into play early 2026 in Oklahoma. And super important, real data is showing massive, massive savings when it comes to prescribing healthy vegetables and food, cooking classes to people with severe diabetes. So much to talk about in so little time. So buckle up and enjoy. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food Podcast, where we learn more on how to put money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities, and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Welcome to another episode. Today with Erin, advancing the food as medicine movement. Welcome back, Erin.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much for having me. Excited to follow up. It's been a while.
SPEAKER_03:It's been a while. I was checking my notes and it was January 2023, and then we released in March. And I think it's safe to say the Food as Medicine movement is not the same. Just as a small understatement. There's been a lot of negative news on health in the global health picture. There's been a lot of scandals on ultra-processed food and a lot of research coming out, and a lot of research and a lot of work being done on the food as medicine movement. So I'm super excited to unpack as much as we can squeeze in the next hour and ten minutes. And so with that, just to open it up for people that haven't listened to the previous one, which I will link below, of course. But just as a short uh intro, um, what do you spend most of your time on and how come you spend most of your waking hours on food as medicine?
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Well, so much has changed, and I'm so excited to dive into that with you. But for people who haven't uh listened to me or heard me before, uh, I'm a super passionate advocate for food as medicine and for farmers to be involved in that and integrating food as medicine as a healthcare intervention inside of healthcare, and for farmers to be paid as farmer cysts uh as they very much deserve if they're using good soil health quality. So really such a good word, uh pharmacist.
SPEAKER_03:Like this is dead. No, no, I know, but it's so like once you see it, I mean we should produce a merch with that. Anyway, for sure.
SPEAKER_00:We should. We should definitely do that. Uh so really creating a, you know, in a way, a circular economy with integrating healthcare and agriculture and saving healthcare a ton of money while driving those costs back into creating a local regional food system that is nutrient dense. And I would say microbial uh diversity uh is very important. Uh that's really the layer underneath it all, really. Uh and so we have we have a produce prescription program in Oklahoma. And if you're an international listener, that's right above Texas. Uh we are really proud.
SPEAKER_03:Because you learned how to put that. Like just to make people aware of okay. Like because I think everybody heard heard of Oklahoma, and then it's like, okay, but where if you would, I mean, if you put me in front of a map without any lines of the US for like that's gonna be tricky, just as Europe is tricky for many others. Yes. Um but yeah, we have a lot of international listeners. Actually, 40% is North America, so they would they would be right at home, but the other 40 is North America. Or is is Europe, so okay, right above Texas, Oklahoma. It's quite a big city, right? It's not tiny.
SPEAKER_00:Um, Oklahoma is fairly small. Uh, we have, you know, for some historical context, it really was the dumping ground for Native Americans. Uh, it was where the trail of tears led. Uh, it was really what they thought um the soil was dead, there was no good things there, so let's just dump Native Americans there to die, basically. Um, and so because of that, there's a lot of resiliency, there's a lot of history, and there's a lot of wounds, but a lot of opportunity. Uh, we actually had the richest black community in the entire nation in the 1920s, alongside the Osage Native Americans, were the richest people per capita because of oil and gas before they were obviously systematically murdered. But there's a lot of heritage here, there's a lot of culture. Um, and really what food is medicine excites me so much because it really values it values a lot of the cultural heritage, and it can. It has the ability to resurrect a lot of that. And we have a lot of rural areas in Oklahoma as well. And I really believe that if you create a more circular economy and not an extractive one, that we can really resurrect economy in a lot of ways in rural economies on the back of food as medicine programs. And so a lot of people say, Aaron, you know, a lot of people they just they just work their life to solve one problem, and you're trying to solve like three or four at the same time. And uh, that's what efficiency is to me. That's what I want to do. And if I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01:We don't we don't kill the birds. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:But and in terms of in terms of just to give people a picture in terms of health care and healthcare challenges, like Oklahoma compared to other cities or compared to other areas, is it a a good place to try because it's challenged in terms of that? Is it a a relatively healthy city? Like what's the let's say the the benchmark or or the entry point?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we have some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. Uh, we're very poor in Oklahoma. Uh, we have some of the worst education outcomes. Um, we have the worst nursing home care in the country. We have like a hundred percent staff turnover rate um in nursing homes in the country. Uh, we have the highest incarceration rate of women in the nation. And so there's a lot of opportunity, like I said, for healing. Perfectly.
SPEAKER_03:This is the best, the best place to try it. This is the best place to try it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, that's really why I moved back to, I grew up just south of Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's one of the two really big metropolitan areas in Oklahoma. Um, and really, really saw an opportunity to launch something. I was in, lived in California for a little while, getting my master's degree in gerontology. And I realized, you know, California was saturated with a lot of good things in the kind of health sphere. But what I learned about Oklahoma is Oklahoma has some of the most liberal health freedom laws and homeschool laws. Um, and so it's an it's a very interesting place. And I really got the message that the revolution was gonna start, and it was gonna start in, I know a lot of people don't agree Oklahoma's the Midwest, but we a lot of us say we're the Midwest. And so um I really believe that having uh there's a lot of states around us that have really poor health outcomes as well. And so having really a big light uh in Oklahoma to blast into the Midwest and some of the biggest needs uh in the nation, you know, the coastal regions usually have a lot of innovation first. And so I really felt like I needed to bring my energy and passion and knowledge to this area.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and when we talked last, you were uh showing some very promising results. I think the title we put on, you were saving the local municipality of local region like$750,000 on basically prescribing vegetables and fruit. That's right, which is basically I mean, and but plus some education and cooking classes, which none of that is easy or any, but it's it's relatively simple in terms of all the other interventions we try to do. And it had an immense effect on severe type 2 diabetes patients. Um what what has changed or how that because it was a relatively small program, it was relatively at the beginning. Um, how how is that going two and a half years later? We're now talking November, by the way, 2025, whenever you listen to this just a bit of background. Yes. Um, how what is a snapshot now, two and a half years later?
SPEAKER_00:We started in 2021. So we probably had we were talking like a year and a half into the program, and now we're encroaching on kind of our fifth year. Uh we started with 52 patients in 2021 into 2022, and so we had probably seen around 150 once we started talking, and we've really quadrupled in size since the first year. We've served almost 500 patients. We started with two clinics when we started, and now we've received referrals from 22 primary care clinics or family doctors across six different health systems, uh, and we've seen extraordinary results. We had said we had saved the state like$750,000 in cost savings. I think it's closer to$9 million now with the with the outcomes that we've seen. And what's really cool, and we will certainly get more into the policy talk in a little bit, but um, we had an actuary firm that looks at claims data on health insurance to see how much someone's costing them as far as their health care goes. We hired this third-party actuary firm who got actual claims data from Oklahoma. So in in the US, you cannot see Erin.
SPEAKER_03:It maybe if you're seeing the video, yes, but she starts smiling out well off something that potentially could be very boring. Like it's very interesting to see her like glowing up like this is the coolest thing ever. So hold on, this is gonna be very cool.
SPEAKER_01:This is gonna be very cool.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I mean, it's just when the data is so it's it's like a no-brainer. And a lot of people are always asking, what's the ROI? What's the return on investment? And we are seeing in the nation food is medicine programs are there's medically tailored grocery, medically tailored meals, there's produce prescription, they're done in different settings at retail, at farmers markets, and multi-farm CSAs. They're all done differently, but they're all showing these incredible outcomes. And really, a lot of the studies that have been done and have come out the last couple of years, we're seeing a three to five times ROI on these programs, no matter how they're done. And I would say there's ways to um really make them more effective and long-term more effective, but some food and some education is really the basis of this. Um, and so we got this actuary firm, because our state, you know, we were like, I knew, I knew before we even started this program. I knew this program was gonna work. I knew that it needed to be more than philanthropy grant funded, that it needed to be in health care, that it was already starting to be in healthcare in other parts of the country when we started back in 2021. I knew before someone lost weight, I knew before anyone went through the program, I knew before people reversed their diabetes, I knew this was going to work. And I knew using these dollars and keeping them locally to scale regenerative agriculture and local farmers was the key to this, was that that was gonna create community, close the loop, and make the impact this huge ripple effect. And I knew this was gonna happen. And so, as we uh really a little bit after we talked, we formed the Food is Medicine Policy Coalition of Oklahoma with help from Harvard Universities. There's a group of lawyers there um that are working on policy for food as medicine at the state level. And so, for people that don't know, in the US, the federal government pays for Medicare. That's for older adults, and that's about 67 million people. There are people on state insurance, which are more for low-income folks, which a lot of time have a lot more chronic disease, although I would say most people in the US do, and we can we can talk more about that. Uh, the US spends more per capita on health care than any other first world nation. We have the worst health outcomes. So we've got something really scary.
SPEAKER_03:Doesn't sound like a really good ROI. Yeah. Something to fix there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so um for so state Medicaid, that's state, state by state, the states govern that. They do get some federal match dollars. And then federal, you have Medicare, which is the older adult population. Then you have commercial insurance, you have employer insurance, um, and then you have kind of the marketplace, which is people buying their own insurance that aren't older adults or low income. So food is medicine has really been living in more of the food and security space for the last five to 10 years. It has been focused more on low income. It's been in philanthropy, grant-funded stuff. So, really in a more charitable fashion in those kind of worlds, right? And so it's been really linked to those systems in a lot of ways. But in the last five to 10 years, and this has been going on since like the 1980s. This this actually came about during the HIV AIDS epidemic. And that's really where people found that if you had better nutrition, you responded to your medications better. Imagine.
SPEAKER_03:So it took it took us like 45 years to take that seriously for the rest of the population. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we have, yeah, and we have spent, you know, millions and millions of dollars on nutrition research at the NIH and in the US. And of course, our health has not improved, uh, which is really interesting. And so you have, so now in the last five to 10 years, you know, encroaching on a part when we launched uh in Oklahoma, there were already a lot of existing programs and some starting to switch into getting paid by healthcare and some laws changing uh in different states. So specifically Massachusetts was, you know, a lot of people know Boston, Massachusetts. Uh, they were really the first state to incorporate this into their state Medicaid population. So those who are low income, who have high amounts of chronic disease. So Massachusetts, it started with Massachusetts, and I don't know exactly when, but we could look that up. Um, they've been doing this for at least five to 10 years. They have probably 46 food as medicine programs across the state. Uh, they've got a website with all of them listed. Uh, and so they have a very well-integrated system, how this is a billable intervention in healthcare. And a lot of times in the US, Medicaid is kind of this test bed for innovation. The federal government really encourages this. And so we actually now have 27 states that have passed these laws across the country. And what was really cool to see is two years ago, Harvard University, Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, it's a it's a group in within Harvard University that creates provides technical assistance to states trying to pass these laws for state Medicaid to cover nutrition. They have a gathering where they have people from representing their state if they are working on this type of policy change. And two years ago, there were 17 people from 17 states representing food is medicine policy change in their state. And this year, there were 40 states represented. Wow. So you're seeing this movement. It started moving really fast the last five to 10 years, and it is at lightning speed. And I'm really excited about some of the work I'm doing to incorporate regenerative agriculture and kind of merge those uh systems. But back to what I was saying about the ROI is that we're we're seeing this happen. And, you know, of course, the state is asking me uh, you know, how much is it gonna cost us? What's the fiscal impact, as they say, in policy? And so we have this actuary firm, and they took actual claims data from people on state Medicaid in Oklahoma. Ours is called Sooner Care, Sooner Select. Each state's called them like a different thing. Um, for the Sooners in Oklahoma, that's another historical context. And the University of Oklahoma, it were called the Sooners uh for the land run, which people can look up, they would probably understand that historically. But so we um we got the actuary firm to look at actual claims data, and they said they showed that there were 118,000 people on state Medicaid, so low-income folks with diagnosed type 2 diabetes. And they took our first three years of data, so a little bit after we had talked on our less last episode, uh, we had probably served, I don't know, somewhere around 200 people or something like that. And they took the they took our outcomes and they overlaid that with the actual claims data. And they said if we served 5% of the people with type 2 diabetes on state Medicaid, and we had a 75% success rate, which is kind of where we fall on average, we would save the state$28.5 million net savings, and that's serving a little bit under 6,000 people. And I would say that that was a really conservative number, actually. Um, but just think about this at like a scaled amount.
SPEAKER_02:Like how many include the costs of billions, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, trillions? I don't know. Well, somebody do the math.
SPEAKER_03:And that doesn't even take into consideration the other chronic disease flow, other chronic disease. There's only type two, and the money that stays local and feeds, and probably if you measure the health of the farmers that now have a better outlet, a more local outlet, and and hopefully fairer prices or long-term agreements, which might be even more important.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Um, what does it do for their mental health? I mean, there's a lot of interesting health outcomes.
SPEAKER_00:There's so because that is just on a cost savings per person for those individuals, and it's really hard to calculate what happens. So a lot of the people we serve with type 2 diabetes, they're at an increased risk to have kidney failure, stroke, death, and amputation. So when you how can you calculate the impact on an individual, a family, and a community of someone who has an amputated leg?
SPEAKER_03:For sure somebody has a number of that, but it's endless. But and that this is just for people to to grasp the sheer challenge. This is severe, severe diabetes is beyond the ranking you even use. I think it's goes until 14. Yeah. And you stop measuring and the impact of Simple quote unquote during air quotes here. Um healthy food and cooking classes and making sure that the eating environment changes is immense. Um and it scales them down. I mean we talked about it last time, significantly downloaded ladder, and then of course all those risks get less as well. Has that changed as well? Like this of like let's say the effectiveness of the program to get people further down, or how has been the uh the program itself, has that changed over the last couple of years in terms of what you've learned, what works, what doesn't, how do you go deeper, how do you go faster, etc.?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we've learned so many things on how to get the hardest thing is we know if people eat a healthy diet, it works. Like that's not really something we have to prove. The thing is really how to implement these programs and how do you get adults to change their behavior? That's the biggest question. Uh and so we've tweaked things. We've learned how to incentivize people, we've learned how to screen people better who are ready to change because it's a commitment. It's a, you know, we say it's like a two-hour commitment. Uh, there's lots of barriers to these programs if they don't have transportation. Um, we really look for people who are ready to change. And so we've actually lowered our enrollment rate from when we get referrals, so our percentage of um kind of conversions, but it's increased our participation rate. So we may not enroll as many people out of how many referrals we get, but our success rate has increased. And we've also learned how to get more engagement in classes. And so one of the things that the food is medicine space, the kind of next level I see is more outcome-based driven. We're not just giving people free food. There is a requirement on education and participation, and in my opinion, a requirement should be a requirement on quality sourcing to expedite those health outcomes. And I think we'll see more in research on that. But we have learned how to really incentivize for people to be on time at classes, giving them lots of options to engage with classes, whether it's virtually on our YouTube channel or in person. Um, but we make sure that people are held accountable. And if people um maybe they need to pause the program, maybe they went through a change, maybe their refrigerator goes out and they've been a good participant, and we can get that replaced. Like there's all sorts of nuances to really working in your community. And you want to make it, you want to make it easy enough for people to get in the program and easy enough and simple enough for people to do the program, but you don't want to make it so easy that just anyone comes in it and your outcomes are not going to be great. And really, people are always asking, how do you know are people continuing these changes? And what happens after?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, because it's a one-year program, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a one-year program. We have seen, and North Carolina saw this in their big demonstration too, is that there is increased benefit to re-enrolling someone in these programs. So if we have someone who's been really compliant, uh, we had a guy go from an 11 A1C to a nine the first year, and the second year he went from a nine to a 6.6.
SPEAKER_03:So we see an increased benefit to actually Yeah, we talked about last time as well, indeed, that to keep people another year to have the space and the capacity because it's just a shame not to continue.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. We would we would see we continually see that. So we had been playing with that when I talked to you, and we've continually seen those positivity um in those in re-enrolling folks. Um, but people get it and they may only need a year. And how do we know that they're continuing these changes? So we do measure a pre and post-survey that shows change in habits. Like, have they increased their consumption of these things? Have they reduced their consumption of soda? And I've I've heard from some other participants who like say they graduated two years ago and their A1C, they had uncontrolled diabetes and they reversed their diabetes, and two years later, they still have reversed and kept their A1C down in the lower five range, which is completely.
SPEAKER_03:And the last one is 14, I think, right? If I remember correctly.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's really where they stopped measuring it, so it's really short.
SPEAKER_03:Um, yeah, and so that's really impress and then on the topic of nutrient density and like how important we talked about it last time as well, but how important do you see is the quality of the food? Because some people would say any broccoli would do just to make it, let's say, the argument very very flat. Um, or let's just get more um fruit and vegetables in general, and you're saying no, it needs to, or we prefer, or it's much better if it comes from healthy soils because that adds a lot. Like, how do you make that argument to people that say, Yeah, but it's already difficult enough to do the fruit and vegetables? Let I mean now you also want to source from these special farms. I mean, why do you make our life twice more complicated? What's your what's your counter argument to that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there are there are so many questions about that, and people are still saying, well, Aaron, you know, just taking people off McDonald's to a whole food diet is gonna have great outcomes. And it's like, yeah, that's true. Um, but there's there's multiple reasons. And I'll I'll steal this from Dr. Chin, which is my other colleague sourcing specifically local organic regenerative food who's served 9,000 patients. It's the ultimate multiplier effect. Um, I one of my arguments more broadly on the food as medicine scene is why would we continue to stimulate a system that has got us sick? If the fruit or vegetables are being grown conventionally, we are continually stimulating a conventional system, which we know if we lose topsoil and we lose microbial diversity, we know how depleted that food is. And not to mention how it's being grown, but how far it's being shipped. Uh, you know, as interesting as I've learned recently is that the average fruit or vegetable in a grocery store is 14 days old. And even the USDA says that a fruit or vegetable in particular loses 10% of its nutrients every single day. So if it's 14 days old and it loses 10% of its nutrients every single day, your vital like micronutrients, uh, vitamins, minerals, like and phytonutrients. Not to mention, we're really not seeing phytonutrients like a ton in conventional farming. We're seeing with new nutrient density testing, like with Stefan von Fliet at Utah State, with Eric Smith with the Dacious, like we are seeing an expedited amount of phytonutrients. And one thing that I really I really appreciated that Dr. Von Fliet was saying is that, you know, people are are gonna argue, oh, there's not a real difference in certain things. Um, but these human clinical trials are like three months long. You're not gonna see like changes in LDL in that amount of time. You're really not gonna see A1C changes like when you're comparing conventional to regenerative whole food diets. We would have to have more longer term. And I think what we're gonna see is longer term because regenerative has this whole complete picture of all these food, all these nutrients that the conventional sometimes doesn't even have. And there's so many nutrients in food that we don't even have mapped, that many people are just starting to map and see. And we don't actually know the long-term benefits or or negative impacts that some of these um, you know, in a conventional system, you're gonna be also have anti-nutrients. And so my argument is on multiple levels for the folks that we're serving. It's that if we have people with the worst health outcomes, we need to give them the best food possible. There's a lot of people in the space that talk a lot about equity and dignity for people who are low income. Well, I don't see any better way to create equity and dignity than to be giving them the best food possible. There's also, there's also this argument I actually never get pushback on, which is really great. And it's the satiation argument. So interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Keep going.
SPEAKER_00:If people uh have more nutrients in something, especially if it's local, like we could just, we could just stop there. If it's more local, it's gonna have maintained its nutrients. Like in our program, the farmers are harvesting on Monday or Tuesday. It's in the hands of our participants Wednesday morning. So the food will last for a couple weeks rather than, you know, if if you're listening, if you go to the grocery store and you buy something organic like at Whole Foods and you spend a lot of money on that, it's rotting in like two days, right? And so we have it closer to home. If it's local, it's gonna have more nutrients in it. If it had, if it's raised in better soil health, more diversity, no tillage, um, no pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, like you name it, it's more than likely gonna have better nutrients than something found in a grocery store. And if your body is getting everything it needs, then your brain gets satiated, your gut satiated, like all the all the signals are happening that I'm full and I don't need to keep eating. But the problem is, is we have high calorie foods with low nutrients. And so that's why people are obese. And it was what's weird is like you wouldn't think that someone obese is undernourished, but it's it's they are nutritionally insecure and they're obese. And and you're seeing like most people now are obese and they're undernourished, and so my own.
SPEAKER_03:Does it show in the data then? Does it show then in the data now that there's so many of these programs around the country, which I can't imagine all of them source for quality? And are you gonna see differences like in effectiveness? Great, like of course, getting fresh food with and and uh non-processed and learning how to cook is gonna have an effect, but we would probably see longer term a stronger effect if you source properly.
SPEAKER_00:I I would surmise that that's the case, and there's a lot of groups wanting to look at that. So there's a lot of groups like Tufts University, Harvard just put out a paper about why local food procurement and food as medicine programs are important, even just from like the economic standpoint. And now we're gonna see these institutions, even the Rockefellers, looking at comparing programs by how they source and some other elements and maybe even these value ads that we see from local sourcing in the community and all sorts of different ripple effect benefits. We're going to start seeing those compared more. I would say in the next five years, we're gonna see some results about um maybe, yeah, continued changes. I think people are even more compliant in our program because the food tastes better. If they were just getting, say, like, you know, um commodity crop kind of vegetables, I don't know if they would want to eat it as much. Like we start to get them healthily addicted to something, right? And they're satiated. I would always say this this also goes into this whole talk around economics and how expensive local food and regenerative food is. But what if it's 40 times more nutrient dense and you only have to eat so much of it? And then you look at look at dollars per calorie versus dollars per nutrient, and then we get really into the weeds of it. But I think there's a lot to be said. And I think as we get more people looking at nutrient density, microbial diversity, the the connection of that, and really showing the comparison between programs sourcing this way or source or not sourcing this way, I think we're gonna see that just like with Cadillac prescriptions versus generic, like maybe some are better. And, you know, may maybe they'll prioritize those programs. Maybe people will prefer them. Maybe doctors will even learn the difference between referring their patient to, well, if you want the best program, go to Fresher X. If you just want, you know, um, you know, your everyday generic program. I mean, that would be, I think you can even get go like even a step further with uh procuring and really uh catering per chronic disease and really amending soil or growing certain crops based on nutrient deficiency.
SPEAKER_03:This is just diabetes. This is just diabetes. Like there's a whole other thing. There's whole other stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. You could go really in the weeds of it. And so people are starting to ask those questions. People are starting to want to study those things, and we're really excited to be working with Adacious over the next year to do those nutrient density studies just on our own program, even comparing our own farmers and having some healthy competition. I think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for farmers to compete over nutrient density and lowering A1C and to get paid. If we have bonus payments based on A1C reduction from a health insurance company, they should get paid dividends on creating those health outcomes. And I think we're gonna start seeing more data to that point.
SPEAKER_03:And I don't think it was a thing yet, at least not to this at this scale, two and a half years ago. The revolution, evolution, whatever it's called, of weight losing drugs, or let's say suppression drug, GLP one and the whole suite that's coming now or is already there. How does that influence your work, if at all, and how does that interplay with all of these conversations?
SPEAKER_00:It's been really interesting that coming so far on the market and being very mainstream, GLP ones, I there's what what it has created is an opportunity for a deeper conversation. And it's really shown that hey, food as medicine programs, we produce these outcomes that GLP ones do, but guess what? There's no side effects, and it's a lot cheaper to do. And so it's been this opportunity for really deeper conversations. We've been on the hill talking about GLP ones and food as medicine. Like maybe it's an opportunity that if you're gonna prescribe a GLP one drug, you also need to prescribe a food as medicine program. Uh, I think there's a lot of things, a lot of negative consequences to these drugs that we are just starting to see and probably won't fully realize. Uh, so that's a little bit of a concern I have. And then people are not changing their habits. And the other thing is, we're really glad you brought this up because the questions I get from health insurances on on Fresh RX and Food as Medicine programs is well, you know, how do you know they're continuing this? You know, is it worth it? Is there an ROI? And my question always back to them is what's your success of continuation with GLP one drugs? It's like 20 or 30% of people actually even continuing to be compliant on taking those drugs. And I said, do not create a double standard for food as medicine programs because you're not asking those same questions, but you're prescribing GLP ones like it's like it's nothing. And so I think that that's something food as medicine industry needs to understand their value and that we don't need to prove that food as medicine works. It works, and we do need to have some standards on how it's how it's implemented and how we're sourcing that. But um GLP ones is, you know, we're really we're in a really instead of just really fixing the root of the problem, um we're using GLP ones, and I don't know what the impacts are gonna be. I certainly understand that people losing weight, that some maybe the negative outcomes of GLP ones will um not be as bad as someone being obese long term. And so that's something I think we're really grappling with um as far as a culture goes, but it's been a really great opportunity to show that food as medicine is way cheaper, it creates these same outcomes, and there's no side effects with fruits and vegetables.
SPEAKER_03:And have you seen a combination? Because some of the stories coming out of that now that people on those drugs are seeking because they're just way less hungry and for the first time in their lives, because of course they're battling uh uh food as an addiction for their whole life. And they go to the grocery store and actually look at vegetables and actually instead of going to so there are a lot of these stories. I haven't I've seen some data of people actually going for and and they they they will eat significantly less. So there the argument is they will need more nutrients per bite because suddenly the um the need is to make sure that every bite counts and it's not just empty calories. Have you seen any of the combinations of getting cute food into those programs, making sure that it lasts, and this is a short time, short-term fix because it does seem like we're just running after another shiny technology again. Um, have you seen any integration with with the food as medicine movement?
SPEAKER_00:We have seen people now in some other programs that I help oversee people who are on GLP ones in these programs. And what's really kind of challenging is that from an evaluation standpoint, we almost have to tease apart people who are on GLP ones, because then the question is which program is is causing these outcomes? And so I think that's created it's created a challenge, but again, it's an opportunity. Um, I think I would love to see that they require them to do that, but it's more people on GLP ones that are voluntarily going into these programs. And it's been a challenge. Some programs are not gonna allow people who are in GLP ones just from an evaluation standpoint, um, depending on who's funding or what, you know, what's the nuances are to their program. Um, we're gonna have to probably tease out those things just to further prove that food is medicine works, which is really a bummer. So it makes it a little bit more complicated. Um, but I think you're right. I think they're, you know, I've even seen stuff like different um products in grocery stores more tailored to like people who are on GLP ones, like this is a GLP1 food or something. But they certainly need better nutrition. That's what's really scary, is they're losing, they're not exercising, they're not eating healthy, and so they're losing muscle mass. Um, and that can create a whole other slew of problems. So it's gonna be really interesting to see how this um evolves.
SPEAKER_03:And on because you mentioned Steph of a Fleet, uh friend of the show. Yes. And on the animal protein side, have you, because you were very specific last time, like we're not doing that yet, or we're not doing that because we're focusing uh for now on fruit and vegetables. Um, have you integrated animal protein? Yes or no? Like, what's your um not view on that, but how has this been part of the food as medicine industry?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it is a part of the industry. We just started as a produce prescription program. I am very interested in expanding into like regenerative beef. Um, you should you should hear how many questions from ranchers in Oklahoma I get. Like, when are you gonna start doing that? We haven't yet. We needed to increase the doll, the budget uh per person to do that.
SPEAKER_03:And and because it's often not, yeah. It's interesting because you can buy probably if you look at nutrients per dollar, not so much, but just in in terms of um dollars, how far it goes with with if you look at how much food and vegetable you can buy compared to to animal proteins, uh it's sometimes a challenge. There are, of course, more nutrients in it, so it's not a fair comparison, but it it is what the eye sees, let's say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it it is. And the more I learn about regenerative beef and beef in general and how red meat was really demonized, I do see how it's a very Effective and efficient way to eat. I was vegan for seven years, and now I'm eating red meat pretty regularly. I feel great. And so there's a lot to learn about that. There are programs in the US. There's medically tailored meals, which are pre-made meals. They do include a protein. There's medically tailored grocery, which would be like an expansion from produce prescription that include includes meat and dairy. My quandary on it a little bit is we are, especially who we serve now, are low income. And so they really can't afford to buy organic regenerative produce. But because there's a double-up program that doubles their food stamp snap benefits, they can actually afford to continually buy this quality of fruits and vegetables outside of the program at the farmer's market. They know which farmers it is. They can get a ride to the farmer's market now with their health insurance. And so there is a way for them to continue this. But there's not a subsidy like that, like a double up for meat or dairy. And so I could absolutely give them the highest quality beef and dairy and produce.
SPEAKER_03:That's what happens after.
SPEAKER_00:But then what happens after? And that's a little bit of like an ethical dilemma for me. Um is like, okay, we get these great outcomes, and then they're just, you know, they can't afford to access that anymore. And we get to benefit from producing those outcomes, but um they just get kind of teased with it. And that uh that doesn't sit super well. And so I'm really a lot of my work is now just really brought into how do we build the local food system that's resilient, that's affordable, um, and really help people understand. I think a lot of people, once you really look at like the dollar per nutrient, once you really look at what how it what it costs to eat a whole food diet if you shop and cook at home, um, I think there's a lot to say now that, you know, a meal at McDonald's, you know, if you compare that amount of, you know, say it's like$20 something dollars now, and you look at what you can what you can make and how you can stretch, if you know how to do it, I think there's a lot of nuance to saying it's actually not cheaper to eat at fast food. Um, I think that you can make meals stretch, but again, it comes back to that education piece. You have to know how to do that. And that's also what we're teaching people in the program is if all you have is a dollar general, how do you shop smarter and how do you shop more healthy there? And then how do you a lot of people don't even know how to store fruits or vegetables, so it goes bad. People don't know how to make value-added products from it, like how to pickle onions or pickles. And if they learn how to do that, um, that and they learn how to do that in our program, or even grow, heaven forbid, grow their own food um and make it make it even cheaper.
SPEAKER_02:Shock.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, what a shock. Yeah. And so we even teach people a little bit about like how would they grow in their apartment or something like that. Um, and so those are really critical components that I think when we're having these arguments around affordability and access, we have to really drill down to we need to provide this education, we need to incentivize people to shop more locally. And maybe it's not more expensive. Maybe when you look at all the impacts, when you look at um the price per calorie versus price per nutrient, like when you look at all these things or how to stretch food, like is it more expensive to shop locally? I think we need to start questioning that narrative a little bit more. I think it's a little propagandized.
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. And it it blocks a lot of innovation. And of course, none of this is easy because if you don't have a proper set of pens and you don't have a stove that actually if you don't have an oven, if you don't know how to use it, if you don't have a freezer, you're not gonna buy a whole cow because it's cheaper. That's right. That's right. And if your power goes out constantly, like there's so many layers, but a lot of fixable in a sense, or or quote unquote fixable. And then I think if you or you can do meal prepping together, like there are programs here in in the Netherlands to do that, you bring it home and it's actually a social activity, and you have most of your meals for the week ready. Exactly. And we know that a lot of people are lonely and have health issues, so you have a double whammy um and you need somewhere, I don't know, a closed restaurant that can serve as that place because you need some profession more or less professional kitchen. Like in a lot of ways fixable, probably if you calculate properly then per nutrient, I would be surprised if it would be more expensive in a year 20 plus. Let's say fast food hasn't become cheaper lately with inflation. And so that's uh it's it's not uh impossible to beat that, but there needs to be uh this food environment to be ready to serve that because if one thing is missing, the whole thing just collapses. Um and from a I remember talking about it last time, like outcome-based, you mentioned it now as well, outcome-based programs of outcome-based structures. We talked a bit about uh social impact bonds, which are not really bonds, but outcome-based practice um structures or outcome-based programs in general. And you made a statement or a not a claim, but like I would be surprised if we wouldn't be working on that very soon. Um how has that been? Because the outcomes are so big financially. The savings are just enormous. We have nine million, twenty million, etc. And but of course scattered around, and the ones that are currently paying for the programs are not the ones that actually recoup uh any of those savings. So there is some let's say um new connections and new alliances that need to be built around it. We all as society save a lot. The insurance companies save a lot. The hospitals maybe not because they are are not getting all the re-emissions constantly. But let's say if we figure out a way to get some of those, 10% of those savings or whatever, it would pay for all of these programs easily. And we can easily animal protein for the rest of your life. That's not a problem.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03:Um, how are we doing on that in terms of getting some of those savings back to these programs and actually fuel expansion around that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know, unfortunately, a lot of these programs are still at this fee for service standard. So the US, for example, our healthcare system has been built on fee for service, which that just means every time you go to the doctor, they get paid, whether they fix you or not.
SPEAKER_03:Um, we've been going What does that do us to assist them if as end of our life? I know.
SPEAKER_00:We have to align a system. It's crazy. Um, I'm sure other countries maybe do that a little bit better, but I know a lot of them just have the same problems. Uh, we've been really switching to something called value-based care or more outcome-based care. One of the things they changed about 10 years ago was fining hospitals if people are readmitted within 30 days for the same thing. And actually, um, you would think that hospitals don't want to don't want food as medicine programs to be covered, but I've I've been talking to more hospital systems, and they actually said they're losing money on these chronic disease frequent flyers, and that they're really not built to do that.
SPEAKER_03:It's a bad term, but it's really good for chronic disease frequent flyers. Frequent flyers, yeah. It's not a frequent flyer you want to be in general, appropriate, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and they they are getting, they are just not built for this. And they actually, many health systems have implemented their own food as medicine programs, and they actually really do want this covered. A lot of people say, well, why would they want that?
SPEAKER_03:And when you talk to them, probably because they get punished, and they get punished per day. A hospital is just out of this world. Like you can provide probably a three-star, pretty much Michelin um course if you wanted to, just to cover the cost of a day in a hospital and a night. And so, yeah, I can see if they're getting punished for that. They would love just to treat acute illnesses, yes, uh, emergencies and all of that.
SPEAKER_00:But they're built for. Yeah, absolutely. And so they're just being killed by this. This is also why rural systems are failing. Um, there's all sorts of challenges with this. But um, so yes, they they do want this to be passed. Um, unfortunately, a lot of the food is medicine programs are also being aligned in this old system with fee for service. And I've been really trying to inspire other programs to be more of what we would call a price per month per patient that would pay for the whole program, plus bonus payments. And there are programs, there are contractual arrangements with different types of like diabetes programs, not necessarily like food as medicine programs, but there's different types of interventions, um, case, case management or coordination. There are arrangements in healthcare that are value-based based on outcomes that do pay bonus payments. Some go at complete risk, so they wouldn't charge that price per month per patient, and they would just get paid like really big bonus payments on outcomes. Those are arrangements you can have with health payers. And so that's how we're interested in aligning. I think that's incentive alignment that keeps us honest on both ends. We share in those cost savings that we're producing for these, either a health system or a health payer. It's only fair that we get some percentage. You know, we're doing what everyone else is being paid to do. And we our reversal rates have continued to increase. Like we are seeing people reverse their diabetes and the cost, and if not, you know, incredibly manage them. And we deserve to be paid for that. All food is medicine programs deserve to be paid for that. And that those dollars should stay in your local economy and go back to your farmers. And then it's just this whole cyclical circular economy, and it's really drawing down funds from healthcare into the community to create these outcomes. So we are really trying to align currently where it stands in Oklahoma. We do have a pay for success model that is where is called MetaFund in Oklahoma. It's where private investors, and we we may have talked about this because it was on my on kind of my future vision. We have gotten a project funded with them. It hasn't started, it starts early next year, and it's for a rural pilot. So private investors have invested in this fund for these outcomes, and the state has agreed if these outcomes are produced, that they will pay these investors back. And it's not 50-50 from the get, but once if we do go over that pay, if they pay the state pays them back, if we go over what they've invested, we'd get to split that 50-50.
SPEAKER_03:Um that's a real impact bond, like we've seen that in prison programs. Yes, exactly. Foster care. Yeah, pregnancy, teen pregnancy, yes, uh, job, uh, like let's say get people back into the the job market, et cetera, like the standard. But this is probably a first around food, or not?
SPEAKER_00:This is the first. So Oklahoma's done um actually a lot of these different programs as far as like they've done the the um the prison type programs like um recidivism, they've done preventing foster kids going into foster care. But this is the first they've done in healthcare in Oklahoma, and we're really excited. I think the state agreed to pay back almost a million dollars on outcomes. And we hope this is a first of many, but we're we are working this model, but we're also, I want to talk a little bit about uh how we have passed the Food is Medicine Act in Oklahoma on May 1st. And I can talk more detail if we have time, but we did pass the Food is Medicine Act of Oklahoma on May 1st. This directs our health care authority or who governs our state Medicaid and the contracted entities, which are health insurance, managed care organizations, lots of terms here. Uh, there's three in Oklahoma that provide Medicaid, provide insurance for low-income folks in Oklahoma, Humana, Aetna, and Centeen. And now we are working on piloting programs with them for them to learn how to integrate it into their system. And so our goal is we're kind of at this transition, what I call like the sustainability transition, uh, to contracting with these payers, not only having the pay for success model with MetaFund, but also going after outcome-based, value-based, outcome arrangements with these healthcare entities. And I'm hoping, you know, sometime next year we'll start being able to wean off of philanthropy and grant funding and have revenue and be getting cost savings back into our programs and back to our farmers.
SPEAKER_03:And on the policy level in general, how has that shifted over the last two and a half years? Of course, you have had uh an interesting election, to say the least. Um some interesting uh interest or focus on health. A lot of noise, a lot of I mean, I I try to avoid the news mostly just because it's uh too time consuming. But I've seen you on LinkedIn um in in many, and I've seen the Oklahoma one you just mentioned. In general, just for people in or outside the bubble and in or outside, let's say, the country, um, what is your take on on the policy side of things? So important and so messy at the same time, because uh let's say the interests are enormous, obviously, in in the health space, even bigger than the agriculture place. We think in agriculture the interests are big. Wait for the health one. Um what what's been what's been on your mind in that sense?
SPEAKER_00:There's so much to unpack on the policy side. I've been super involved at the state level and at the federal level. There's there is a lot of division in the US around politics more than anyone's ever seen. It's really hard. And um I really do a I try to do a really good job as staying very neutral and bridge building. And I I really truly believe that this food is medicine movement and food truly unites us, that we actually all really agree on this issue. And whether, you know, I can understand lots of different feelings around uh the current administration, a lot of skepticism, lots of hope, uh, all different things, a lot of people kind of waiting to see, like with the movement around health, the Making America Healthy Again movement, um, there's a lot of criticism, a lot of skepticism, um, and a lot of hope. Uh it for a lot of people, this is really the first time that we've been seeing alignment across all these departments, and that a leadership actually saying, even just saying, and maybe you know, whether they implement it or not, linking health in the making America, making um children healthy again strategy report, it ended with soil health. That's a pretty landmarked thing to be saying. And admittedly, right before in the Biden administration, the White House had a conference on nutrition. So the FDA, the USDA, HHS, those entities were together there too. So this even started before it's it's you know, it's been kind of bubbling up. And the Making America Healthy Again movement, um, it has made it more mainstream for people to understand, you know, whether you like it or not, or agree with everything that uh RFK has to say or Dr. Oz. If you, you know, I can understand being skeptical on certain issues, but on this specific issue, this has made this more understood broadly, that we have a problem in our food system. There's lots of chemicals in our food system that need to be removed, that Europe has outlawed a long time ago. Um, this has become more of a dinner table talking point. Like more people are understanding.
SPEAKER_03:Do you see that in your region as well? Do you see that at dinner parties outside your bubble when you explain what you do, which maybe until a few years ago or maybe here, people were like, oh yeah, like sort of nodding. And now actually somebody has an opinion or actually knows what you're doing. Like, have you seen that shift in terms of uh easier elevator talk or easier coffee machine talk or easier dinner table talk?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, if you if you can be really careful how you phrase certain things, I think at the very root of it, most people, whether they agree with this or that, or on this side or that side, they do realize the food system, whether they are changing their health or not, or doing anything about it. I think that most people now understand mainstream-wise that our food is bad and that our health is bad, and that our start of any change is not working.
SPEAKER_03:Realization we have a problem is probably the first step. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I think that's the problem.
SPEAKER_03:Then if you do something about it, then how you act, there's gonna be that's gonna be a very different story. But realizing we have a problem in any, I think any addiction is the first step.
SPEAKER_00:Uh yeah, exactly. And I think people are still in denial about who's in power, and they're and so they're not really open to bridge building, which I just think, you know, if I have a chance to advise the leaders in this country um about these programs and how they align with what they say they are aligned on, then I'm gonna take that chance. And I did have the privilege of meeting with Secretary Kennedy, with Secretary Brooke Rollins, with Dr. Oz. I got a chance to tell them about our program and the outcomes that that's having and what that's doing to save the family farm. And, you know, there was I got a lot of flack for even going and smiling in a photo. But there's, you know, it there's lots of people that meet with leaders that maybe don't agree with everything and they're not gonna frown in the photo. Like that's just not gonna happen. Um, and so that's lobbyist, at least. Yeah, you'd be a really bad advocate. Um, and so my feeling is if it, you know, I'm going to advise on those things. So at a federal level, uh even, you know, in the last five years, we've we've seen demonstrations with veteran affairs. Uh, so for veteran healthcare, we've seen demonstration with food as medicine in Indian Health Services, which we now help a tribe in Oklahoma that is doing one of those projects. Um we're seeing more and more type of demonstrations on food as medicine and more research being done. And so at the federal level, we really want to get this integrated into Medicare, which is that 67 million people, because it's happening at that state level, like I was talking about. And once you've now you have enough momentum there, then and that's where a lot of the innovation goes in the kind of the test bed, then you roll it into Medicare, and that's gonna roll it into pretty much everything. Once it's in Medicare, it just kind of goes everywhere. It's gonna go into commercial insurance more, it's gonna go into employer insurance, it's gonna go all across veteran affairs, Indian Health Services, you name it. And so federally that's the goal. But what I've seen at the state level is um we had a bill in Oklahoma, the Food is Medicine Act, and what I saw, and because of the alignment at the federal level, this is the type of conversation that's having these committee hearings, right? So it went through the Senate in Oklahoma, unanimous vote in the Senate. Okay. We're mostly Republican majority, but we have Democrats. They all agreed. Wow. They all agreed on this. It went through five committees, unanimously voted on in every committee. I'm thinking we're gonna get pushback on this, that, or the other.
SPEAKER_03:What was your thought on pushback? Like what what was your your what were you scared about, or what do you think? They're for sure gonna flag this. Well, sir, a lot a lot of the questions.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a lot of the questions are around. Like, how much is this going to cost? There's a lot of uncertainty because of Medicaid cuts. And we had just in Oklahoma transitioned to what's called Medicaid expansion, which we started taking federal money to serve more people on state Medicaid. And we had just transitioned to managed care, which we means we were just managing it internally as a state. And we changed to bringing in these large corporations to help us implement and serve more people in Medicaid. And so because we had just gone through that transition and there was a lot of controversy around that transition, talking about making them do something else, um, how much is this going to cost them? Um, I was expecting a lot of questions around that. But one of the things that in the in the one of the committee hearings, the initial one, was you know, RFK wants us to do this, so this is what we're going to do.
SPEAKER_03:It helps sometimes have a bit of backing up the hill. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:That's really interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. And so it passed in the House the final vote 76 to eight. And not one Democrats voted no. So you had majority Republicans, all the Democrats. They said it was just a misfit of Republicans that voted no or just didn't vote at all. 76 to 8, and five unanimous votes on the bill. And that was on May 1st this year in Oklahoma. And so we became like the 27th state or something like that to pass this type of legislation. Alaska passed theirs last year. We saw Hawaii. And what's really exciting, Cohen, is that I did get to write part of the bill, and we did include prioritizing locally grown food in Oklahoma in these programs. So really, really proud of that to be in there. I wanted to put way more in there, as you can probably imagine, but you get what you get.
SPEAKER_03:Soil health, soil health metrics. I'm imagining neutrinos, but you can only push so far. Like there's a because it's the policy side is so fascinating in that sense. You need to be bold and not too bold at the same time. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:And they don't want it to be overly prescriptive either. They don't like like too much, especially in a in a more conservative area where they want kind of less government. Uh, so we have to be careful with that. But on my horizon is, you know, there there was a bill that was actually introduced um early last year that was a federal bill that actually outlined soil health practices in sourcing for food as medicine programs. It was too late at the end of the session, and so it wasn't really going to go anywhere. But we are working to support a reintroduction of something very similar at the federal level to prioritize programs that source with soil health practices, and we actually spell out uh regenerative practices. So um that should be interesting here.
SPEAKER_03:It's like across the aisles, it's uh how can you be against this? Like it's as soon as it becomes that. Yeah, no, for sure, because a lot of people are, there's a lot of people, but how yeah, how could you really be against it? It's an interesting piece of just like and and somehow I think renewable energy became that in some places, in some pla other places. I mean, I think the king of of renewable energy is Texas at the moment, which you wouldn't expect, but actually is absolutely killing it in that sense. Like, how do you want to not groan your own food, not be dependent on others? Yeah, the nutrient side of things, healthy. Like, how is that became that? How did that become polarizing is just fascinating. And but how do we depolarize it is the more important question. Like, how do we make sure, like, okay, let's all agree on this at least. And then we can disagree on many other things. Because otherwise, we're just not gonna pass anything, and we can can't count on government to do anything. And of course, a lot of these issues we're in is partly because of a lot of legislation and a lot of past decisions. So we have to do this. I'm very thankful for you doing that work because it cannot be easy. Um, and and must be not always fun, let's say.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think we have forgotten how to have honest arguments. Uh, it's really sad. There's lots of reasons why that is, but I really believe that one if you really understand the issue, you really agree on this. Um, I had a really interesting uh experience with the pesticide immunity bills that are going around where they're, you know, bears trying to pass to be protected from ever being sued based on chemical use if someone gets sick. And I was calling some Democrats in Oklahoma to vote no on that bill. And they said, Well, all these far right people are voting no. Why would I want to vote the same? And I said, No, you actually agree on this.
SPEAKER_03:This is like a big corporation that we're all against. It is like they they they're not even from here. That's right. Um, that wants to protect themselves about making after they made you sick, just to just to get the things right. Your farmers get sick, and now you cannot sue. I think it should be a right to sue if something goes wrong. And this is yeah, one of those things. And and as they're losing and losing and losing lawsuit after lawsuit, of course they tried to get other strategies to uh to cover themselves because it will go down as the worst bought, like buying merger and acquisition in history, probably. Like Bayer is worth less. There was a fascinating article in Bloomberg, it's worth less now the merger or the acquisition than they paid for Monsanto to begin with. And the end is not inside, they paid another, I think, 10 billion in total. Like it's a it's an ongoing, um uh ongoing one. And yeah, they've got to look for other protection. But this is something that you should definitely agree on. Like, oh my god, how could we not?
SPEAKER_00:How could you not? But that's what it's come to is like it's not about understanding the quality of something or the character of people, it's all it's so politically charged, um, which is really unfortunate when people want to work on an issue that's really bipartisan, um, people will try to put you on in some box, and I just say, you know, I'm unboxable, but you know, people will try to do it to me all the time. But yeah, we actually agree on some stuff. And I think if we can focus more on that, um, and I think people want things to be black or white. You're not going to, if you didn't work with people because you didn't agree with every single thing that they believed in, we'd never work with anybody. Uh, we'd never get anything done. And so uh people need to remember that. Um, that, you know, it is a it is fortunate that we can have differing opinions. It is good that we can talk about different things and have the right to do that and not be murdered for different opinions. We should not be being murdered for different opinions. I want people to have the right to speak their opinions, whether I vehemently disagree with them or not. That is really important that we protect those rights and that we want people to still feel comfortable to do that. And so I really truly believe that food is medicine is one of the most uniting things that we have left, and that we really should get on the whole page. And I really believe that the regenerative ag movement, it's also expedited alongside food is medicine. And I believe it's the sweet spot that joining the nexus of those regenerative ag and food is medicine is the ultimate ripple effect. And so I'm working across, I've been working to bridge build those movements for a very long time, and I'm really excited to start to see that happening more and more.
SPEAKER_03:I think it's the perfect way to wrap up. I want to thank you so much for coming on here again for the work you do, obviously, tirelessly building bridges and coming here to share about it. And uh, I think the progress and uh the speed of movement now in food as medicine um is extremely fast. So I would say another two, two and a half years when we check in again, might be earlier. Um, I'm guessing there will be a lot of developments, um, as there has been so many since the last time we talked. So thank you so much. I want to be conscious of your time. I know you need to go to another call and uh want to wrap up here. So thank you so much, Erin, for coming back. And of course, good luck with everything you do.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_03:I mean, what happened? How did even healthy food become politicized, polarized, etc., whatever the words are? How did it become such a minefield? And how do we bridge that? I think it's a very interesting and good point that Erin made in this conversation. Like, be almost be political, but in this case be almost apolitical. Get like we can't afford to waste or spend three years discussing and trying to convince. We need to really bridge the aisles and get a very diverse group of people together and say this is a focus of everyone. Like, how can you be against healthy food coming from farms that are in your region and that are helping people with extreme severe diabetes? And I think people that don't have that or don't have that in their family can imagine how bad that is. I mean, she was talking about death, amputation, kidney failure, all very, very interesting things. And how much those costs as well, apart from all the human suffering, are crippling our economies. Like if we look for economic growth, not that we should unnecessarily, but if we look for big levers to save and to have money available to do other things as we need to do so much, probably tackling the health crisis is one of the easiest. And it seems to be that tackling that with healthy food coming from healthy farms is a double whammy, let's say. So a fascinating checking conversation. I hope you enjoyed it. We of course had space to do another few hours, but uh had to keep it short and be respectful of the time of Erin in this case. But hope to have her back soon. And what this means is really try to lean across your political divides, whatever side you are on, or sites, because it all is blurry, and really try to gather people around that common uh purpose of really transforming the food system, starting with healthy food for people that need it most, coming from healthy farms. So I'm curious to, of course, diving deeper and deeper into this food as medicine space and seeing the first impact bond or outcome based scheme coming live and really see what the data is saying because it seems to be such a no-brainer, and hopefully in a couple of years, it is a no-brainer. Thank you for listening all the way to the end. For show notes and links discussed, check out our website, investinginreativeagriculture.com/slash posts. If you like this episode, why not share it with a friend? And get in touch with us on social media, our website, or via the Spotify app. And tell us what you like most. And give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or your podcast player. That really, really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
