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John Kempf is an entrepreneur, speaker, podcast host, and teacher on a mission to make regenerative agriculture mainstream. This is John’s third time on the show, and he’s here to give us an update on trends he’s seeing in the regen ag space.
John notes that historically, the type of farmer that turns to regenerative practices fits into one of two camps: true innovators that embrace trying new things, or they are farmers that were forced to innovate as a result of being under duress. Now he sees farmers turning to regenerative agriculture because they’ve observed the success of others.
Above all, John says it’s regenerative relationships that will fundamentally make the difference. This includes relationships between soil biology and plants, between livestock and the landscape, and between stewards of the land and the greater food system. Once those relationships move from transactional to collaborative, then regenerative agriculture can have a global impact.
Listen in as John and I chat about:
- How the diffusion of innovation applies to farming
- Is regenerative verification necessary
- The missing pieces of the USDA’s Principles of Soil Health
- Why we need more money to flow back into farming communities
- Why commercial industries need farmers as advisors
- Why we need Walmart for regenerative ag to move forward
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 251: John Kempf
Resources:
Sustainable Dish Episode 86: The Future of Food with John Kempf
Sustainable Dish Episode 132: John Kempf
The Diffusion of Innovation by Everett M. Rogers
Wilding by Isabella Tree
Stephen Harrod Buhner’s trilogy: The Lost Language of Plants, The Secret Teachings of Plants, and Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.
The Shephard’s Life by James Rebanks
Connect with John:
Website: John Kempf | Kind Harvest
Twitter: @realJohnKempf
LinkedIn: John Kempf
Podcast: Regenerative Agriculture Podcast
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
This podcast was made possible by LMNT, my favorite electrolyte company. The all-natural sugar-free powder tastes great and gives you the perfect amount of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you perfectly hydrated.
Check out my Salty Grapefruit Limeade made with their limited-time grapefruit flavor. Plus, you can get a free flavor sample pack with any purchase using my link: sustainabledish.com/LMNT
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the podcast, everyone. I have my returning guest John Kempf with me. He is an Amish farmer, I believe in Pennsylvania. Is that right, John?
John Kempf
Northeast Ohio,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Northeast Ohio. That’s right. So we’ve chatted before. I love having you on as a guest. I love watching you speak. The last time I saw you speak. I was actually in Australia in Brisbane at the RCS Convergence conference, and I was in person, and you were teleported in via Zoom and had the most amazing points that you brought up and books that you recommended. And every time you speak, I am like buying the books as you rattle them off as fast as I can. So I’ve got them here. And I’m just so happy to have you back and really open to whatever you’ve read lately, whatever you’re thinking about. Let’s have a conversation.
John Kempf
Well, that’s quite a compliment. Diana, I thank you. It’s certainly an honor to be here. And I enjoy having this conversation with you. And you might want to be cautious about giving me a heads up that you’re buying books as fast as I recommend them. Otherwise, I will make it a point of filling up your bookshelf.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, I have… when you were giving your talk you actually showed your bookshelf behind you and how long and impressive it was. It was quite a bookshelf. So let’s get started. You just mentioned to me that you got back from a conference that you were at – a Regenerative ag conference. What are you seeing in the state of regen ag these days?
John Kempf
Well, there are many interesting things happening in the landscape. There is a shift in the types of farmers or the personality – the innovator style of the farmers that are coming into regenerative agriculture, which I find really intriguing. And this is not universal enough that we can even say it’s across all of North America or across all the United States. But there are a number of growing regions of local regions where we are moving past the innovator stage and moving to the early adopters. When you look at the historical pattern of who’s adopted regenerative agriculture over the last couple of decades, or really, in the last five to seven years, the majority of people that have been making this transition fit pretty squarely into the innovator camp, and that they’re comfortable trying new things. They enjoy trying new things, and being perceived as front runners, and being constantly innovative. It fits their personality, and they really find fulfillment in that. And that’s been part of the segment of innovators. The other segment of innovators have been people who were forced to innovate as a result of being under duress, financial duress, or family health stress. There was some type of stress that really caused them to question the system and begin thinking about farming differently. So that’s been the kind of the historical pattern and we stand on the threshold where we’re already seeing in our work here at advancing eco-agriculture for the last 12 to 18 months, more and more, we’re seeing people coming in who don’t particularly perceive themselves as innovators, and who aren’t entering this conversation as a result of some type of stress factor. But instead, they’re coming in because of the observed success of others. They’re seeing that, hey, these other farmers are having success with this system. And I want to try this too. And so at that point, you begin shifting from innovators to early adopters, which means that all the other companies who are in this space who want to communicate the message of regenerative agriculture, the farmers in the field need, we need to begin thinking about our messaging and our communication differently. Now, it’s a different space. It’s an emerging space, and it’s becoming different from what it has been for the last decade.
Diana Rodgers, RD
You know, this is so interesting because I saw the same pattern 10 or so years ago in the ancestral health, Paleo nutrition world. So those of us who were very early in the space changed our diets because we had a health crisis so I was celiac and start dealing with my blood sugar and really found a paleo type diet as a solution to my health situation. And other leaders in the space were very similar – Robb Wolf, Chris Kresser, Michelle Tam. And then as the movement grew, we got more sort of biohackers. And people that were just interested in optimizing their health, so less so much the same kind of thing exactly like what you just said, and more people that were just sort of tinkering and experimenting and wanting to try it. And I’m curious how you think things are gonna move forward, because what I saw was, those of us who started early really had this worldview, and this really kind of serious take on everything, but the tinkerers kept trying to, like, find ways to cheat it. They were like, well, it’s paleo enough. But you know, I can still up pancakes or whatever, and kept trying to, like, you know, stretch the boundary of what was sort of acceptable in the diet and what was like a cheat. So I don’t know if that’s your…
John Kempf
Oh, come on, Diana.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Your idea of where it’s going to go? But that is definitely the way it went in the nutrition world.
John Kempf
Yeah, come on, Diana. I like my Kamut pancakes. And antioxidant drink. Anyway. Well, I’ve always been really intrigued and try to understand how people think and why they make the choices that they make. And you know, there’s lots of fields of study. There’s, you could look at sociology, you can look at psychology and the process of decision-making. And I’ve been particularly intrigued by the historical work of Everett Rogers and his colleagues. And I’m sure you’ve heard of Rogers’s The Diffusion of Innovation as a book? Well, it’s, if you have here…
John Kempf
We’ve got book number one.
John Kempf
Okay, if haven’t read the book, you’ve certainly heard the language and are familiar with the language of the innovators, the early adopters, the early majority, late majority, and kind of the trend of how a population adopts new innovations. And what many people don’t realize I mean, this work is foundational to sociology and understanding how new innovations spread throughout a population. And what many people are unaware of is that the original foundational research in this space was done in agriculture. Everett Rogers original study was on how Iowa corn farmers adopted the use of hybrid seed corn back in the 1970s. Okay, so, and agriculture has been kind of a proving ground for this understanding of how people make decisions for decades. And you know, what is so fascinating, I have yet to encounter someone in the agricultural field who has ever read Everett Rogers original work, except for the people that I’ve directly recommended it to and given them the book. It’s this profound disconnect. But at any rate, when we look at how a given group of people adopt new ideas and new technology, the historical pattern, the pattern that’s described in Everett Rogers work and his colleagues work, is that there is this first group that is driven by a desire to be different. They are… they want to be perceived as being the innovators they want to be first. These are the types of people who will stand in line for hours or days to be to buy that latest model iPhone. They want to be first. They want to be perceived as being first. And so there has this been this historical trend that a lot, somewhere in the neighborhood of one to 3% of a given population will fall into the group of being innovators. And it is deeply fulfilling to them to be perceived as being first and to be perceived as an innovator. Well, that pattern hasn’t held true in regenerative agriculture. And based on what you’re describing, it sounds like it may also not have held true in the early paleo and some of the Keto and some of these early dietary shifts that were really made for fundamental health reasons. And when I think about when I question why the difference in adoption, to actually let’s back up first, what is the difference? The difference is that instead of those first cohorts of people, adopting regenerative agriculture being inspired by desire to be different, the majority of them I would say, probably upwards of 85%. The majority of them were inspired or were brought to that place as As a result of duress that we already talked about, there was some type of stress. So it they weren’t coming from a desire to be different or to be better. They were coming as a result of being forced to do that – to have their back in the corner. And when I think about okay, why is that? Why was that the case for regenerative agriculture? And why is this pattern different than it was for adopting hybrid seed corn? I believe the difference is because it requires systems change, rather than practice change or individual change. It’s not that significant of a change, to shift from one corn variety or open pollinated corn to hybrid seed corn, like us, that’s not that significant of a shift. But when you want, when you start thinking about switching an entire farming system, our entire operating system, it’s more akin to switching from Windows to Mac OS, or vice versa,
Diana Rodgers, RD
Or switching a religion, right? I mean, it’s like… it’s really monumental in the worldview shift.
John Kempf
It’s an entire mindset change, an entire worldview shift. You nailed it. And as a result of that, I think that is why there hasn’t been the widespread appeal and adoption for that early cohort. But now, the second cohort, the key characteristic of the early adopters, is that they are comfortable being on the cutting edge, and they are comfortable making significant changes as soon as they observe others having success. And that’s the stage we’re at right now.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Interesting, interesting. So what, how, where were people coming from for this conference? You were in? Did you say Chicago?
John Kempf
Yeah, it was in Chicago. And there were… there was disappointingly, only a handful of farmers in the audience, probably 20 or so people out of total of 300 or so that were registered. And many of the rest were CPG companies like Cargill, and Nestle’s and Kraft, Heinz of the world, PepsiCo, etc. And we’re all there and describing their vision or their aspirations for how they want to influence and participate in regenerative agriculture in the future. And, you know, it’s really disappointing to me that there are not more farmers in the these organizations aren’t making a point of including farmers voices in the conversation because like farmers are the ultimate stakeholders or the principal stakeholder, their voice is at least as important, if not more important than the voice of the consumer. And yet their voices are largely being ignored. And there’s, I think this is, over the last half a dozen months or so I’ve been in the process of changing my mind about whether regenerative agriculture needs to be verified or needs to be certified. If you would have asked me this question six months ago, I would have said that, I think we should avoid it regenerative verification, because regenerative agriculture is so variable where you have hundreds of different crops, and hundreds of ecosystems and 10s of 1000s of possible combinations like it’s impossible to codify a process that is universally applicable across the board. And what I observed happening, what I really care about, is having a regenerative agriculture become the mainstream globally in the next decade and a half. So I want 80% of all ag land on the planet to be adopting regenerative models of agriculture in the next 15 to 20 years. And for that to happen, we need inclusion of everyone, we don’t need an exclusion is a problem. And this is one of the challenges that happen with organic certification is the moment you have a certification, you automatically create an in group and an outgroup. And that automatically creates an us versus them and the opportunity for antagonism. We don’t need that. But over the… I’ve been in the process of changing my mind, because so I do think there are important pieces, and there are people working on developing regenerative verification standards that are taking my thoughts into account. It’s going to be very important to include people based on their being on a journey rather than on a destination because everyone is at a different spot on the journey. But the reason I’ve been suggesting and asking voice farmers to step forward and let their voices be heard in this process is because if we permit the CPG companies to define regenerative agriculture, it will be defined exclusively in terms of soil health. Why? Because it removes them from all responsibility and puts all of responsibility on the farmer. And right now, but when you look at the history of this movement, roughly, I don’t know the exact timeline but let’s say roughly 15 to 20 years ago, Ray Archuleta and a group of his colleagues at the USDA NRCS first formulated what they called the five principles of soil health. Those five principles of soil health have now been widely distributed. Recently a sixth one was added the principle of of managing based on context. And then in the last year, or two or three, these six principles of soil health were magically rebranded as the six principles of regenerative agriculture. And that’s a problem. It’s a problem, that regenerative agriculture is defined exclusively in terms of soil health, because regenerative agriculture needs to be about much more than soil health. We should add two foundational additional pieces that should be included is a regeneration of public health, by growing nutritional, nutrient-dense food as medicine, and the wide-scale implications of that, that we can have on improving people’s health across an entire population and be, and perhaps the most fundamental, is regenerating the capacity for stewardship. What do I mean by that? We know that in order for us to have a truly regenerative agriculture, we need more stewards in the landscape of people who care and love the land and the livestock that they are stewarding that they are caring for. And there is again, there’s context variation here, different types and sizes of operations all around the world. But there is an optimal heart to acres ratio, or heart-to-livestock ratio, that if you have too few humans and too few people on the landscape, you cannot have the stewardship impact, the impact potential isn’t there, there needs to be a certain number of care. And what is happening right now is we do not have enough young farmers coming into agriculture. And in the regenerative space or otherwise, we don’t have enough students coming back into the landscape. And the fundamental reason for that is they’re not rewarded well enough. Like we have… I was in at this conference, I was in a room full of young professionals from all types of different industries, funding finance, private equity, CPG companies. And these are a group of very smart, focused young people. If they were to move from whatever it positioned industry, they’re in into an apply the same level of intellectual focus on a farm as a farmer, they would expect they should expect a dramatic pay cut, probably 60 to 70% or more. Why is that reasonable? Why is that acceptable? So right now we have all of the inputs providers, who are providing inputs to farms and all the offtake people, all the CPG companies and intermediaries who are buying farm products from the farm, they all have this extractive relationship with the farmer, they all want to extract as much as possible from that relationship. And as a result, we have in the way that regenerative agriculture is being framed right now regenerative agriculture being defined as regenerating soil health, that once more puts all the onus and responsibility on the farmers, and it puts none on the rest of the supply web. So what really needs to happen is we need to include in a regenerative agriculture, if we want to regenerate the capacity for stewardship, more money has to flow back and stay in rural landscapes in rural communities, we have to be able to incentivize young people and pay them really well for being good stewards. And because of this, for this reason, I believe that we should not have regeneratively certified farms, but that we should have regeneratively verified supply chains. And I want to give you one example of what that might look like. This is a story that was relayed to me from colleagues in the Netherlands. As I understand it, there is a grocery chain retailer in the Netherlands called Albert Heijn that represents somewhere between 60 and 70% of the total fresh produce supply chain. This is as of seven or eight years ago. And Albert Heijn has a relationship with a Logistics and Distribution Company called Bakker. Bakker is collectively owned by a group of farmers from across the country. Each of these three organizations so you have three stakeholders here you have the farmers as growers. If you have Bakker as an organization, and you have Albert Heijn, none of those organizations has salespeople, and none of them has buyers. They have complete open book price transparency, anyone from any of those organizations can see the pricing and the margins for any product for any of the other organizations. The farmers actually set the retail price points of what fruits and vegetables are going to be marked on Albert Heign’s shelves, and they determine when sales are going to be conducted and at what price points. In addition, these this group of organizations has also set the goal of having 90% of or better of the fresh produce, they harvest move from the farmer’s field into the customer’s refrigerator in 24 hours or less. And they have consistently been successful in achieving that goal for quite a number of years. Now, that is an example of a transformative relationship, a regenerative relationship that is not extractive. And those are the types of relationships and the types of supply webs that need to be developed. If we want to regenerate the capacity for stewardship,
Diana Rodgers, RD
You said, so many things that really resonate me and I resonate with me. And I’m reminded of just the other day, one of the donors to my nonprofit, the Global Food Justice Alliance asked me what I thought of the new Jeff Bezos Foundation. And, you know, my initial thought was, it’s probably not great, but I went to the website and I took a look at their, where their dollars are going and what initiatives are funding. And over and over again, it was soil health and carbon emissions. Right. That’s the other thing I think people are overly focused on is just seeing agriculture as we must use as least land as possible and have as least as you know, low carbon emissions as possible without fully appreciating the full biogenic cycle that happens, and you know, how cattle can utilize marginal land that can’t be cropped. And I mean, there was none of that it was like we have to grow, you know, the most seeds as possible on the least amount of land as possible. If we’re going to feed this growing population, there was no thought into what should be humans be focusing on for food given that 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, and we have, you know, other populations around the world who are malnourished and the top nutrient deficiencies are all best found in animal source foods. So why would we be growing more crops and focusing on you know, how, you know, lagoons are improving soil health when we can also be incorporating livestock in a very positive way. And so this carbon tunnel vision is just so common among this longtermism, technocratic view of agriculture. And it completely leaves stewardship out leaves ecosystem function out, leaves biodiversity, you know, not just soil microbial biodiversity, but like, overall ecosystem, biodiversity and the pulsing health of a healthy landscape completely out of the picture.
John Kempf
There are so many things that I could say in response to that, Diana, I think, obviously, we share perspectives on things that are excluded from the picture. But I agree with you that I actually would prefer that regenerative agriculture not be too closely associated with the idea of carbon sequestration because it necessarily needs to be so much bigger than that. We need to have conversations about regenerating the hydrological system regenerating rainfall across a lot of different landscapes and reversing desertification. It’s really simple. If it when you look at this, from an agro-ecology perspective, it is not a lack of rainfall that creates desertification. It is mismanagement of the land that creates a lack of rainfall that creates desertification. And the fundamental tool that we have for being good stewards and for reversing desertification and regenerating landscapes, particularly in areas of lower rainfall environments, are to wisely manage livestock and cattle on the landscape. Like there is no other technology, and there is no other tool that can accomplish what the grazing livestock can accomplish on arid and semi-arid regions.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. Yeah, I mean, there was no better example of that than when I was in Chihuahua, Mexico working on my film, Sacred Cow, and seeing the difference, as we’re driving through Chihuahua, which is it’s just practically a desert. Used to be grasslands. And then you get to Alejandro’s ranch. And it is like Eden. It was…
John Kempf
It’s not practically a desert, it is a desert with less than rainfall per year.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Right. Right. And, he’s… there was no extra inputs except for cattle that brought back all the grasses and everything there.
John Kempf
Oh, yes, yes, there was one. There was one of their input: conscious, heartfelt management of those cattle. It’s not just the cattle, but it is the stewardship of those cattle. Like if, as you know, someone else without the level of conscious thought and heart engagement could also have had cattle and just manage them completely differently and not have had that effect. See, I emphasize this point because, no, you’re right. There are two completely different points of view diametrically opposed as to the role of humans in the landscape. The one point of view held by many environmentalists and people in the kind of the from a rewilding orientation is that we can best regenerate landscapes by removing people from the landscape. Right? And the second point of view, is that actually, humans, as conscious stewards can be the ultimate, we are a what’s the word that I’m looking for a hyper keystone species, like we’re familiar with the idea of keystone species being influencing a whole trophic cascade, humans are the ultimate hyper keystone species, because we can manage all the other keystone species in an ecosystem. And so it has been demonstrated over and over again by people who care and are on the ground, that the fastest way to regenerate landscapes of almost any type is with thoughtful stewardship.
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Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, I last summer, I got to go to a rewilding project in England at Isabella Tree’s project. And it’s Knepp Estate. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that and her book, Wilding. It was gorgeous. But they I saw a lot of overgrazed areas and under grazed areas, because the animals have free reign over everything. And when I often get into the most heated arguments with people who think they’re doing it right, like rewilders, and for some reason, they’re especially prevalent in the UK. And, again, it’s so frustrating to me, because it’s like, they just missed that basic worldview lesson of, you know, just back to basics. And that’s the same thing. Again, you know, that you saw at your conference that I see in Jeff Bezos and other tech folks who are trying to tech their way, you know, looking more at chemistry and less at biological cycles, and understanding that agriculture is a biological cycle and not a chemistry cycle.
John Kempf
When we think about cycles and bringing, bringing this conversation back to the carbon orientation, when I’m teaching classes to farmers on regenerative agriculture, agronomy, I tried to be sure to point out that the most fertile soils the most productive soils, the soils, which yield the highest yields of the highest quality crops, our soils which cycle the largest quantity of carbon, for a farmer, from a farming and agriculture perspective, sequestration is secondary. It’s not the primary objective. The primary objective from a crop health and overall ecosystem health perspective is to cycle large volumes of carbon. We want to have vigorous, abundant microbial populations, bacterial populations in the soil, in the soil respiring and exhaling carbon dioxide and moving that up to the soil surface and slowly diffusing that into the atmosphere, where we have green photosynthesizing plants, capturing that moving it back into the root system and into their overall plant biomass while also capturing a segment a proportion of additional carbon that comes from the atmosphere in addition to what they’re getting from the soil. So it’s true that there should be a constant continual game in a healthy ecosystem. And it’s also true that the largest volume of carbon dioxide that plants are absorbing in a healthy ecosystem comes from the soil, not from the bulk atmosphere.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and that’s why the folks who are so bent on everything must be treed – everything must be forest. You know, closed canopy forest is not a cyclical active like it chokes things. So it’s, you know, anyway, that’s what I see a lot. That’s another thing that I find very frustrating.
John Kempf
You know, Diana, you mentioned the conference in Australia where I spoke remotely. And I think one of the points that I made there is relevant to this conversation. When we think about stewardship, there’s this quote that I’ve shared many times from Bill O’Brien, the outcome of an intervention has nothing to do with the skills of the intervener. It has everything to do with a place within from which the intervener comes. And that is so true in our human-to-human interactions when we try to change someone’s mind or change their opinion about something as simple as which pair of socks to wear or where to go for dinner, all the way up to really important decisions and really important conversations. Whenever we try to change someone’s mind, we can think of that as being an intervention. When we think about being stewards in the landscape. The definition of being a hyper keystone species or being a steward is that we are consciously directing and redirecting the energies of different organisms. And the outcome of all of those interventions, whether when dealing with people, or when dealing with landscapes, is going to be determined by the place that we come from within.
Diana Rodgers, RD
That’s wonderful. What are some books that you that you wish these young people or that I could send a Jeff Bezos like? What? What do you think is going to help these folks change their worldview and start looking at the whole picture in a different way?
John Kempf
Well, of course, everyone is on their own journey, and different types of information appeal to people at different times. But if there were one resource, or one book that I would, that I think would allow many people a window into and allow them to deeply feel connected to what is really happening the landscape, I would suggest Stephen Harrod Buhner’s trilogy. He has the first one is titled The Lost Language of Plants. And the second is titled, The Secret Teachings of Plants. And the third is titled Plant Intelligence. And if you were to read any of those books, they’re all very unique and very different with almost no overlap. I highly recommend all three of them if you are at all a serious student of these topics. But if not start with the first one The Lost Language of Plants and see how that captures your imagination. When you get done reading any of these books, you will quickly realize the incredible intelligence that exists in living ecosystems and the way that they all communicate with each other. Did you know that plants have a neural network that is precisely identical to our own. And when I say it’s precisely identical, I mean, it has the same neuron structure, they use the same neurotransmitters. It is identical from a biochemistry and a structural perspective, there is no difference between the neural network of plants and our own neural network, with one exception. And that exception is that when you have large, mature plants, like a mature oak tree, for example, their neural network, which presides mostly in their growing root tips, is significantly larger than our own. So we historically have associated neural networks, with the capacity for informed, conscious decision-making and choice-making. And now we are looking at plants and seeing how they respond to their environment in ways that we often ignore, because it’s not immediately visible to us in a short time span. But we’ll look at extended time windows and how plants communicate with each other and care for each other and communicate in the whole ecosystem. It quickly becomes apparent that here is an incredibly beautiful, complex living community that is in constant communication with each other that we are largely blind to it is really awe inspiring and rewarding to, for me, at least to really dive into these communities and understand what is happening in these ecosystems.
Diana Rodgers, RD
What other trends are you seeing? Oh, wait, first of all, so going back actually, to the regenerative certification? Are you working on a definition or are you seeing any organizations coming forward with a definition of regenerative agriculture that you’re feeling good about?
John Kempf
It’s still premature for me to have a qualified opinion of the various ones that I’ve looked at over the last half a dozen months, it seems to me that the one that perhaps has the greatest opportunity of success on a significant scale, what is the one from Regen Verified? Sorry, no, that’s not correct. It’s called Regenafide. And it’s still early days, early development. But it looks as if though, from what I can tell they have the right intent, they’re coming from the right place within. And they are listening very closely to the voices of farmers and to the entire supply chain to really try to develop a multi stakeholder relevant verification that works. And so I’m quite optimistic for them. But without question, at some point, in the next couple of years, we will see a coalescing and a general agreement around regenerative verification. Because otherwise, we end up in a place where it’s so diluted as to be meaningless. And there is too much noise, and it just falls by the wayside as what happened with the whole conversation around sustainability a decade and a half ago.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Mm hmm. Yeah, when I’ve been asked in the past, what I think it was, I had always just sort of lead with intent. And it was really hard for me to put a definition on it. But my answer was always that you know, the intent of the early entrance into the organic movement or sustainability. It’s all the same thing. And what I was noticing, in the early days of the regenerative agriculture movement and conferences, were people talking about it as if they had discovered this, right. Like it was this like, oh, well, you know, sustainable out because we found this and this is so much cooler, regenerative. And I’m like, yeah, yeah, no, but we’ve those of us who really have our heart in it have been thinking this way. Since the beginning, it’s just that the terms are changing, and the definitions keep changing. But the folks who are really land stewards have always been land stewards, and didn’t need you to define it for them.
John Kempf
Fundamentally, regeneration is about regenerating relationships, on all levels. Specifically, I would say, I would use the words regenerating relationships, from transactional relationships to collaborative relationships. When you think about the European grocery example that I shared, that is an example of a collaborative relationship, but and when I say fundamentally, regeneration is about regenerating relationships, that is at all levels. It’s regenerating the relationships between soil biology and plants, regenerating relationships between livestock and the landscape, regenerating relationships between different plant species between our interactions as stewards and the landscape and livestock and plants and soil microbes. It’s fundamentally about rethinking and shifting all of those relationships, from transactional to collaborative. And this speaks again to the heart of what has gone awry in the past with both organic certification and with the whole conversation around sustainability is at the end of the day, if the supply web and all the relationships that exist in the in the greater Food System Web, if those remain transactional, then at all its various levels, then regenerative agriculture will not have the impact globally that we know as possible.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, and I wish that I was able to dive more in my book and my film into the impact it has on rural communities. And I know you touched that, on that briefly. One of the reasons I went out to the Lake District in England and filmed with James Rebanks was his first book, The Shepherd’s life, he really talked a lot about how these rural communities, these farming communities in northern England, were inundated by school teachers, not from the community and teaching these kids that you know, the the end goal is to move off the farm to you know, be a banker in the in the city. And so this exodus off farms I mean, you know, Wendell Berry talks about it. We can see it a lot. I’ve talked with Alan Williams a lot about the loss of rural America and you know, Will Harris is certainly bringing it back at White Oak Pastures with you know, his goal is to create a lot of jobs, and to employ a lot of people and to make them feel like their work has meaning. And that’s definitely something I hope to see more of.
John Kempf
There are many people in this space like Will Harris who are really good examples of this. I mean, we have Gail Fore and Alejandro and Joel Salatin, and the list kind of goes on and on of farmers who have become very successful entrepreneurs and are bringing people back into the landscape. And that there, when you think about those examples, every one of those entrepreneurial farmers was able to facilitate that by shifting their operation from having transactional relationships with people buying their goods, to collaborative relationships, collapsing the supply chain going direct to consumers and capturing more of the value that they are producing. And when you think about what that means, from an agricultural ecosystems perspective, I think, as at no time in the past or in recent history, there is it appears to me that the current landscape of food product ingredients and intermediaries, so all the people who buys raw materials from, buy food products from farmers, and get them on to grocery store shelves, I expect to see that landscape fracturing and coalescing a lot in the next, or I shouldn’t say coalescing, I use the word fracturing and compressing. There are too many layers, right now there’s too many fingers in the pot, that all have very tiny profit margins. And so they’re all being squeezed. And the only way to relieve some of that pressure and allow for greater financial opportunity in both in the agricultural community in the farming community, as well as throughout the supply chain, is to compress some of that and to combine some of those product markets or product margins with vertical slash horizontal integration that is regional centric. So I think this is where I use the terms both fracturing as in becoming more regional regionalized and localized, and also compressing.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, or, you know, blowing it, I mean, disrupting it. And that was one of the things that was so funny. Again, when I went to this Jeff Bezos website, the one of the biggest grants that he was investing in was to the Good Food Institute for alt meat and innovation research into alt meat. And one of the reasons was to give farmers a better livelihood, which I thought was so hysterical, because there’s nothing more disconnecting, than to further remove the product people are getting from the original state that it’s produced in, and I don’t see anything beneficial to rural communities to food sovereignty to, you know, regional economies than the alt meat movement.
John Kempf
You know, it’s so unfortunate that the mechanistic scientific method worldview has, does not include or has failed to incorporate or failed to listen to a more holistic worldview of the practitioners that are in the field. When we look at what is happening in the technology space, and what is garnering investment and enthusiasm in the business community. It ranges from vertical farming, to alt meat to carbon sequestration facilities that can with billions of dollars of investment, sequester several 1000s, or 10s, of 1000s of tonnes of carbon dioxide deep inside the earth. And these solutions all purport to address the problems. And they have lots of funding, funding and money has been directed into these, but none of them like it’s I’m really, I’d like to ask the question. How many vertical farms have an actual farmer as an advisor? How many alt meat companies have actual farmers as an advisor? How many of the investment funds who invest in these types of organizations have actual farmers as an advisor? If they did a lot of stuff that has no possibility of long term, significant success and regenerating our overall ecosystem, I think would fail immediately. So we have this very mechanistic worldview, this reductionist worldview that is prevailing in the areas of high science and technology that, quite frankly, has really missed the boat with much of agriculture.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, exactly. Right. And so I, you know, that’s what frustrates me sometimes about going to the regen conferences, you know, and but also at the same time, I also find, like you were saying way in the beginning just to bring this back that regen farmers sometimes are exclusionary to themselves and not open to spreading this knowledge to others. I don’t want an us versus them, I want to ‘yes and’ relationship between those who were doing innovative cool things, and teaching others and teaching businesses, like, I just connected Alejandro with a very, very large meat company, like the biggest meat company in the world who are really interested in more regenerative grazing. And I’ve gotten pushback from other kinds of organic and regenerative farmers for kind of working with industry to try to get them better. But if I can get a massive meat industry to be 5, 10, 20%, better than that’s more…
John Kempf
Where’s the downside?
Diana Rodgers, RD
And if the goal for all of us – for the whole world is more better farming, then we need to be including large brands in that – stewarding them along instead of automatically assuming they’re the bad guy.
John Kempf
Exactly. I completely agree with you. We would be much better served to assume that other people who on the surface may not appear to share our values, we would be much better served to assume that they come from the place within a desiring to do the right thing. Because that is without question true for most people. You know, this reminds me of a podcast episode I did half a dozen or so years ago, I forget the exact timing. But Walmart had just announced that they were going to begin carrying organic produce in a more significant way. And there was all of this outrage from within the organic community that Walmart is the antithesis the values that Walmart espouses, are the antithesis of the values espoused by the organic community, and how can we even dare? Or how could we even conceive a future where Walmart was distributing a large amount of organics. And my response was like, this is exactly what we want. This is the future that you have professed to desire. Like, it’s if you want organic agriculture to really grow and have a significant impact, then it needs to be distributed through major retailers. How else are you going to reach 90% of the population with 90% organic produce? If those are your aspirational goals? How else is that going to happen without including the majority of supply chain?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, today, Walmart is also the largest retailer of grass-fed beef in the world. Yeah, this is amazing. And you keep hearing people who are so kind of closed-minded, but I’m like, you know, as a public health, you know, as a mom, as a dietitian, I want accessible grass-fed beef to be the norm. And so I completely celebrate this 100% And if other folks, you know, have the privilege to work directly with their farmer and the farmers are getting a bigger cut of that, I want more of that, too. We need all of it.
John Kempf
Yeah, we need all of it. There was a small group doing some interesting research on nutritional density and integrity in out of New York a couple of years ago, I forget the organization’s name. They were doing very preliminary early stage research. And they were testing vitamin C content of spinach from off the grocery store shelf and all types of different outlets from all types of different brands. The highest vitamin C concentration was found in spinach from Walmart, because of the compact time window from harvest to being on the grocery store shelf. Yeah, the volume turnover, that it was freshest, and therefore had the highest vitamin C content.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, I mean, I’ve worked in the grocery industry, I worked for Whole Foods Market for five years. And I know which stores to buy my seafood from, because it’s the ones that have the highest turnover. It just makes sense.
John Kempf
And we have particularly across the Midwest, as many other parts of the world as well. We have food deserts. I mean, it’s kind of bizarre that you would call the Midwest a good food desert. But that’s absolutely what it is and where it’s not quite to that same degree here in Northeast Ohio. But of course, being Amish we have some travel restrictions, are not able to move around and buy groceries quite as freely as the population at large. You know, the one place where we can get organic and grass-fed milk is the local Walmart. Oh, we have three health food stores, and a town of 10,000 people. The one place that has local or that has organic raw milk, or not raw milk but has organic grass-fed milk is Walmart.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Hmm, amazing, amazing. Well, anything else? I mean, I know we’re running over time a little bit or the time I had mentioned to you that I thought we’d go. Anything else you want to add? Where can people find you? Any kind of closing remarks before we go, John?
John Kempf
I would just say that this phrase, of the outcome of an intervention has everything to do with the place within from which the intervener comes. That means for all of you listening for all of us, I include myself in this our ability to create change in the world and to create the future that we know as possible, that is going to require us doing work on ourselves internally, developing ourselves internally. And to the degree that we develop ourselves internally, and then manifest that in the world around us. You know, one of my good friends and mentor made a comment several years ago, that he just made it in passing in conversation, and I looked at him and it really struck me, he said, If you want to know what a person’s internal landscape looks like, it’s actually really easy. You just see what their external landscape looks like in their life, because one is going to be a reflection of the other. And that really resonated with me quite deeply. And so it’s our opportunity, or our capacity to create change in the world, is going to be in direct parallel to where we come from within. And so I would encourage all of us to continue working on that, and to come from the right place within when we interact with other people. And yeah, if you want to find me, my website is pretty simple: johnkempf.com, I try to bring all the various projects that I’m working on together in that one place. And we have a really awesome social networking platform that I am the benevolent dictator of on kind harvest.ag It’s a moderated platform, it’s not free, because I want people to be the customer and not the product. And we have really great conversations about regenerative agriculture and farming in general on that platform.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Wonderful. And for those who don’t know the spelling of your last name, it’s KEMPH.
John Kempf
Actually KEMPF
Diana Rodgers, RD
I’m sorry. My dyslexia in my brain just turned your F to an H
John Kempf
Thank you for having me on, Diana. I’ve enjoyed this conversation and let’s go change the world. Let’s change our neighborhoods. We all know that a much better future is waiting for us.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thank you so much for your time. And yeah, well, we’ll have to make this a yearly conversation where we check in and trade book ideas and catch up. So thank you so much.
John Kempf
Thank you.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
