The Rundown with Rene Knott
The Rundown with Rene Knott is a weekly online news and culture show which aims to keep St. Louis informed, inspired, and connected. Hosted by trusted journalist Rene Knott, the show highlights the people, stories, and moments that define the city.
The Rundown with Rene Knott
Gibron Jones
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In this episode of The Rundown with Rene Knott, Rene sits down with St. Louis farmer and entrepreneur Gibran Jones for a powerful conversation about food, health, and access.
Jones shares how growing up in North St. Louis led him back to the land, and how that journey turned into Confluence Farms, a 240-acre operation focused on bringing fresh, whole foods to communities that need them most.
The discussion dives into the reality of food insecurity in St. Louis, the impact of processed foods on health, and why many families lack access to fresh options. Jones also explains how his farm is helping other growers scale, while educating communities on nutrition and the importance of eating foods that come from the ground.
It’s a conversation about health, equity, and rebuilding systems from the soil up—and why access to real food is one of the most important issues facing our region today.
The Rundown with Rene Knott is brought to you by I Got Dan and Midwest BankCentre.
Why is it good to eat foods that come from the ground?
SPEAKER_01We've drifted away from eating more of the whole foods and the natural foods. And we've navigated towards highly processed foods because, you know, they've been scientifically doctored to or scientifically engineered to appeal to our taste buds. And if you don't eat those things, and let's say you're a child and you grow up, you're not eating those things, you don't really know what those things should taste like naturally. So to give an example, I um I made some sorbet out of blueberries, and I took it to one of the neighborhoods that we actually provide food to. And the children enjoyed it, but one of the parents came back to me and said, Hey, I don't, this, I don't like this, this doesn't taste right. And I'm like, Well, I don't, why, why not? Was there something wrong with it? It just doesn't taste like the blueberry candy. And that, in essence, is the problem. Like you've never had a real blueberry, but you think blueberries taste like blueberry candy. And those things, sugar, sugar, uh, fats, all that salt, it's they they engineer foods to appeal to those things on our taste buds.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for joining us for this latest episode of the Rundower 39. We have something special today, a subject that is very near and dear to my heart, and that is food insecurities. Do you realize that throughout the St. Louis area, thousands of people go each and every day without something to eat? But now we're gonna help you tackle that issue by talking to a man who's actually a farmer himself, bringing fresh foods to our area and beyond. I want to say welcome to Jabron Jones. Jabron, how you doing, man? I'm good. How often do you get Jabron James? Um, every once in a while. Did you get LeBron James?
SPEAKER_01Uh that's once in a while.
SPEAKER_00Once in a while. Once they did tell by the height difference.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Maybe that's well, and height and wealth difference.
SPEAKER_00Oh, there you go. There you go. I want to start with this one. How does a guy from the city become a farmer?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so interesting enough, uh, I I grew up in Walnut Park West, and my family, uh, we used to own a uh four-family apartment there. And so I was taught at an early age, around six years old, how to grow food because we had a 17,000 square foot plot of land right next to our building. So, as a means of helping to provide a way for us to have food for the family. Um, my grandmother taught my parents, and then my parents had me out there with my sisters, and so that's kind of how things started off. And then around 18, they asked me if I wanted to do it anymore, and I said, No, I'm I'm out, I don't want to do this anymore. But years later, I returned. Um that was an interesting story too. We were on uh I was actually working in Austria on a pumpkin farm. Okay. And I was I was I was an architect working out there, and I was living on the pumpkin farm, and I just reconnected with the land. And when I moved back to the States, I said this is what I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_00So it called you back, so to speak. Absolutely. Absolutely. What does it mean to you to take a seed, put it in the ground, and then to see that seed flourish into something that nourishes someone?
SPEAKER_01Well, it it means a lot. I mean, uh, you have something so small that can feed, you know, uh entire timer, an entire human being or entire family. Um and then on the economics, you know, level, um, I look at you know, seeds as penny stocks.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Right? So you take a tomato seed, if you will, um, and the value of that is 0.0001 cents. But when you put it in the ground and it grows, you have a plant, the seedling is now one dollar. Okay, you can go and you go to different nurseries, you get seedlings for a dollar, or you get you let it grow a little bit more, then it's like six dollars. And then if you let it fruit, then each one of those fruits, I mean, I you know how much tomatoes are like 350 a pound. So um it's it's something that uh is very impactful from a from a nourishing standpoint, health-wise. Um, a lot of us we need to you know reduce the amount of uh um foods that are highly processed and move back to whole food. So it really helps, you know, from two levels. One from a health standpoint and from an economic level.
SPEAKER_00I'll let you know right now you're talking to a guy who does not eat much when it comes to vegetables. Okay. No broccoli, nothing like that. I'm I'm I'm more of a meat person. Really? For the most part. Yeah, yeah. Doesn't lettuce and tomato on a sandwich count though?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00All right, then I'm good. I'm good with all this. This is an iceberg. I want to talk about your farm. Um, so you're just right here in the area. You told me it's 200 plus acres?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 240 acres. Uh, it's called Confluence Farms. Uh it's located on Shackelford and Weehop. Uh, so we we are uh we started off as uh I co-founded the farm with a partner of mine, and we started out growing food, um, distributing it to the community, but then we wound up turning it into an incubator farm to help other farmers because a lot of farmers were growing food in smaller plots of land in the city. In the city, about 70% of the soil is contaminated with lead. Um, and so what we wanted to do was become a platform for those farmers to have uh access to land, resources, seas, and those types of things.
SPEAKER_00When you set out to do this, was that ever a thought in your mind that it's going to become this uh almost a coordinated effort with multiple farmers through you?
SPEAKER_01Not really. I think I think for me it was just um trying to figure out what I wanted to do next in life. And it wasn't until I saw how there were a number of different people coming into the space that needed access to land, and land is limited. Um, they're not creating more land. So, how do you provide an uh avenue for those people who are growing in the city to then have access to a quarter acre, acre, you know, five acres to actually grow on?
SPEAKER_00Since we're talking about the city, and I began by talking about food insecurity, just how insecure is the food situation in St. Louis?
SPEAKER_01It's pretty serious. Um, it's pretty serious, especially with, you know, the let's let's just talk about the school system, for example. 98% of the students own free or reduced lunch. And actually, I would say most of that is free lunch because there's a significant um significant poverty level that people uh in the city live under, not even at the poverty level, just under the poverty level. And so with recent um with recent bills that have been passed by the federal government that have affected SNAP as of sept, no, I'm sorry, as of um March 1st, sorry, February 1st, as of February 1st, what happened was the SNAP benefits for people um changed. So you actually had to either work 80 hours a week or you had to, I'm sorry, 80 hours a month, or you had to actually volunteer 80 hours a month. And that's for anybody from 18 to 64. So if you're talking about an age difference of people who are in their 50s and 60s that may have some diet-related illness or may be um have some type of disabled um situation going on, they don't have access to the food. And so we provide food to all of the senior builders for the St. Louis Area Agency on Aging for the city, and a significant amount of that is uh is based on people who don't have access or they can't afford the food. And so that's you know, that's all paid for by the city, and we contract directly with them. So there's a there's a substantial amount of people, and I'm not even you know, there's single mothers, um, you know, expecting mothers are not necessarily eating the healthiest. So it's part of it is food access, the other part of it is uh educational and knowing what to eat, and there's the nutrition side of it as well.
SPEAKER_00Why is it good to eat foods that come from the ground?
SPEAKER_01Well, um I mean uh agriculture is probably one of the um most beneficial industries to be in. And when you're talking about food, when you go to the grocery store, the healthiest things in the grocery store are the whole foods. So if you're gonna eat whole foods, things that come from the ground, the quality of the food is much higher than if you get something processed. Okay. If you get something highly processed in the grocery store, it's made with a lot of synthetic things, um, additives, and what winds up happening is that those additives create disease. And most of what we found from the work that we've been doing with uh some of the hospitals like BJC, we've been able to lower um A1C blood sugar levels or reverse some of the uh kidney issues that people have had by eating raw or whole foods from the ground. So it's really really important. We've drifted away from eating more of the whole foods and the natural foods, and we've navigated towards highly processed foods because you know they've been scientifically doctored to or scientifically engineered to appeal to our taste buds. And if you don't eat those things, and let's say you're a child and you grow up, you're not eating those things, you don't really know what those things should taste like naturally. So, to give you an example, I um I made some sorbet out of blueberries, and I took it to one of the neighborhoods that we actually provide food to, and the children enjoyed it, but one of the parents came back to me and said, Hey, I don't this, I don't like this, this doesn't taste right. And I'm like, Well, I don't why why not? Was there something wrong with it? It just doesn't taste like the blueberry candy. And that, in an essence, is the problem. Like you've never had a real blueberry, but you think blueberries taste like blueberry candy. And those things, sugar, sugar, uh, fats, all that salt, it's they they engineer foods to appeal to those things on our taste buds.
SPEAKER_00Now, when I call you a farmer, in many ways, I gotta call you a scientist too. Because when you discuss food and food from the ground and whole foods and all that, you break it down down. So, how much science did you have to study as you got into this?
SPEAKER_01So a lot, actually. Um, but most of it is just from understanding what's in the foods and what's beneficial and how it impacts the body, right? Um, you know, when we grow food, we want to make sure that we're growing food that can heal people. So if there's a specific condition you may have, we know that we're gonna grow certain things that can help heal those conditions. And that's really what our focus is. We, you know, so ginger helps with digestion. Um, if you eat tomatoes and lycopene, that helps with uh prostate issues. So the the information is out there. And for us, we wanted to kind of separate ourselves from everybody that's just growing whatever, right? We want to make sure that whatever we grow, we're growing it for specific reasons. Um, and so we you know, we source a lot of different seeds from different places in the world. Uh, even one of the largest heirloom seed companies here in Missouri, we get um things like um blue turmeric, you know, and purple ginger. A lot of people have never seen those things. But the way that because those things are natural, they're not genetically modified or engineered, and they're grown in in specific regions, a lot of people don't have access to those things. So we get access to them, we grow it, and then we turn it into food for people.
SPEAKER_00And it's growing here in our area. Yeah, it's growing here in our area. Yeah. Some things aren't necessarily conducive to our environment. True. But they're able to adapt and make it.
SPEAKER_01But you can you can do um, I mean, you can you can engineer a space to grow food in. Like there's like one of the companies we work with down in Mansville, Missouri, they produce uh citrus fruits during the wintertime here. So you can get 6,000, 7,000, 10,000 pounds of oranges in the Midwest during the winter. Wow. Yeah, and they're sweet as can be.
SPEAKER_00Wow. I grew up in California, so I know all about oranges, but it's actually warm out there. Even in the wintertime. Um I it's the obvious question. What is the reception you get when the black farmer walks into the room?
SPEAKER_01It's interesting. Um, it depends. If they don't know I'm a farmer, you know, depending on how I'm dressed, they may look at me a certain way. Okay. Once they find out that I'm a farmer, then I it's a slew of questions, you know, a barrage of questions that come. Well, where do you grow? What do you grow? Is it organic? Is, you know, what got you into farming? Um, and so it's, you know, any any number of questions. Uh, and a lot of times in the earlier days, it was, can you help me build a garden in my backyard? Right? Um, and my answer to that was always no, because I could help, but we were just so busy at the time I I wasn't able to do it. But um I think I think, you know, for us, that may be something that we wound up doing later on to help people create their own backyard gardens and things like that. Because I think, you know, back when when the World War II, you know, was happening, everybody was doing the victory gardens, right? Yeah, um the United States people produce a lot of food during that time. And then it was at like at the turn of the century, what happened was people decided not to produce as much. Uh large supermarkets started opening, and then that's where a lot of the convenience, fast food, and also the uh processed foods came into play. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So will a backyard garden or backyard gardens be a savior for St. Louis when it comes to food insecurity? Can it make that big of a dent?
SPEAKER_01I think if everybody, if everybody had their own garden, it could make that big of a dent individually with your family.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01Um, I don't, you know, I don't see it being, I don't see enough being produced uh by people um to be able to do that. And it it requires time. A lot of people don't have the time to do that because you know they're working, and so I don't even have a guard in my back. Oh, really? No, not at all. How is that possible? Uh you know, my wife wants one, and I'm like, just go out to the farm.
SPEAKER_00It's like we got a big garden.
SPEAKER_01Just go out to the farm. I'll pick you something up. Like, I don't want to do that at home.
SPEAKER_00I do that all day long.
SPEAKER_01I want to come home and spend time with her. I don't want to come home and walk anymore.
SPEAKER_00You know, you were uh before we got started, you're talking about uh getting with Tuskegee now and the opportunity that awaits. So, what is the opportunity now with Tuskegee?
SPEAKER_01So I've been working with Tuskegee for about eight years. They sent us um interns back and forth. Um, so I work with the dean and the head of their cooperative extension. And occasionally I'll go down there to talk. Um, but what we're looking at is establishing the same type of operation that we have here, down there, um, where we could take some of the foods that are grown by the farmers and turn those into what's called value-added products. Um, also have some of those farmers ship product up here to us. And then we can turn those into products that can then be distributed out into the community, as well as shipping those products back down there. So, what we're looking at is creating really a consortium of farmers, um, especially along that the that you know, that black belt of farmers that are uh down south. Um, you know, when I went down there for the first time, that was the first time I've seen so many black farmers in a room. Yeah. I was I was really blown away. I mean, like hundreds of them. And it's it wasn't, it was really surreal for me because coming back up to Missouri, you see like a handful of us, right? Um and they all had their land, they had land. So what we're looking at doing, because they get locked out of a lot of institutional contracts, um, and we have institutional contracts because we turn their products into actually consumer packaged foods. We're looking at developing a relationship with them to provide a platform for them to sell through the institutional contracts that we have. So that way they can generate income, they can grow their business, and it can grow to the point that maybe the younger generation, some of their sons and daughters, may want to take over the business. That's cool.
SPEAKER_00That's cool. If I were to take you back to that guy that was working on the pumpkin farm on the other side of the Atlantic, would that guy have this mindset? Would that guy think that all this would be possible, or was that guy thinking somewhere else?
SPEAKER_01That guy didn't even know what what he was doing back then. I mean, he I think I think a lot of that has, you know, what has uh transformed me into who I am now is understanding the market, uh, understanding really what people want and what they need, and talking to the community on a regular basis, um, and connecting with some of the the institutions. I mean, when I was in Austria, one of the things that I did um that stuck with me was when I went to, and I don't eat any McDonald's, just you know let you know, but when I went to a McDonald's over there, um they only buy beef from those farmers that are growing or raising cattle in Austria. So you can't get beef from America in the McDonald's in Austria. And all of the produce that's in the grocery stores and really everything over there, it comes from the local community. So that's something that really stuck with me. I'm like, well, why aren't why aren't we doing this back home? Why are we shipping food 1500, 2,000 miles? Most of the food that we grow here in America gets exported because most of it is grain, so sorghum, um, wheat, corn, soy. We ship that stuff out. So those are commodity crops, and that's what's subsidized by the government. They subsidize that, but what they don't subsidize is what's called specialty crop. And specialty crop is just regular food that people eat. And it's interesting that they would call that specialty. And then they call the commodity crop, you know, the corn, soy, all that commodity. But that's a big portion of what's grown here in the United States. And we import most of our specialty crop.
SPEAKER_00I think we need to change that. We do. Because I I think when you're importing stuff, obviously you're not getting fresh, fresh. Correct. You know what I mean? You're getting it from the ground. You may be getting healthier, but you're not getting fresh. And that's what you guys are able to supply here in our area.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, you know, you know the story about the the how tomatoes, they're um, they basically they pick them when they're green and then they force ripen them with a gas on a truck. So when you go to the grocery store and you see the tomatoes and you bite into a tomato, if it's not vine ripened, it's not going to taste like a vine ripened tomato. Vine-ripened tomatoes have a really phenomenal taste to them, and especially ones that are um, you know, heirlooms, a lot of them have sweetness to them, um, even like the sun golds and things like that. But when you buy them from the grocery store and they've been shipped here, they don't really taste like they should. You know, and a lot of a lot of other crops are like that.
SPEAKER_00Well, now I know I might even venture into eating vegetables after this conversation. I doubt it, but I might try a couple of things.
SPEAKER_01If you come out to the farm, I'm sure I can get you to eat some vegetables. All right. I'll come out for it. Like there's a lot of people that have come out there before, and I got them to try some things that they didn't think were white turnips and all kinds of stuff like that, man. Yeah. So well, if you can make it taste like a Big Mac, I'm all in.
SPEAKER_00I'd have to cook it first. Jabron, thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you for what you're doing in our community and uh making a difference from the inside out. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.