0:00

Everyday grocery store

0:03

items like bananas, chocolate,

0:04

coffee -- these are

0:06

global commodities. They pass through

0:08

a lot of people's hands on their way from

0:11

the fields to your grocery cart. This is

0:13

The Stories Behind Our Food podcast, the

0:15

podcast where expert guests share insider

0:18

knowledge about every step along the process.

0:21

I'm Danielle Robidoux -- and I'm Kate Chess

0:22

-- we're your hosts.

0:24

This is

0:27

Kate Chess and we're recording today from Billerica, Massachusetts

0:29

from Walden Local Meat headquarters. I'm

0:32

here with Charley Cummings, the founder and CEO

0:34

-- and our producer

0:37

Gary Goodman is here with me taking over some

0:39

hosting duties today.

0:40

Nice to be here.

0:41

And Charley, thanks for taking the time

0:43

to talk to us.

0:44

Super excited to have you guys.

0:47

So Charley, how does grass fed

0:50

beef work in the middle of the winter? Can you tell

0:52

us a little bit about that?

0:53

Great question. and it's a

0:55

beautiful day in New England out there right now looking

0:57

out the window. so essentially it's

1:00

there are a couple

1:02

of different things that can happen. So All of our beef

1:06

a re still a hundred percent grass fed and finished even in

1:08

the winter months. So the way it works in the

1:10

winter is you can actually graze in the pastures

1:13

on a day like today

1:15

where you don't have a lot of snow cover, assuming, f armers have left that

1:17

second or third cut of

1:19

hay in the fields. And

1:28

cattle can actually, in most cases even

1:30

g raze through a few inches of snow. I 'm again assuming

1:33

that nutrition has been l ocked in the field, a nd then

1:35

outside of that, in this

1:37

sort of harsher winter months, t ypically those

1:40

animals are put on

1:42

what's called sacrifice pasture, t hat you're not

1:44

too worried about it trampling

1:46

the mud and such, a nd fed

1:48

cut hay. So it's essentially the same

1:51

diet. s ometimes that hay is in the form

1:53

of what's called haylage, which

1:55

is sort

1:57

of partially fermented. But the same core product, it just gives

1:59

it a little bit, a slightly

2:01

higher energy value for the, the winter months.

2:03

But that's the

2:06

short story.

2:06

Does a certain kind of hard winter make

2:09

this more challenging? Or does that system that you

2:12

described work all the time, every winter?

2:14

it's a good question. It's , it's

2:16

actually, it's more difficult to get cattle

2:18

to , gain weight, particularly on

2:21

a grass based diet in the summer months than

2:23

it is in the winter months. So

2:26

it's the heat that

2:28

actually causes them to, n ot perform w ell. They're sort

2:30

of more tolerant of the cold, at least the

2:32

breeds we're talking about, which are

2:35

typically like an Angus cross.

2:36

I would not have guessed that.

2:38

That's really interesting.

2:38

Yeah.

2:38

So you're speaking about this very knowledgeably. Do you

2:42

have a farming

2:44

background yourself?

2:44

No. A couple of years back, gosh,

2:47

now, like six

2:49

years ago , my wife and I-- well, let

2:51

me go back a little further. So

2:53

my then-girlfriend and I moved across

2:57

the country , lived in San Francisco for a couple

2:59

years, spent a lot of time in

3:01

California's Central Valley. I was in -- at the time in the

3:03

composting business. So that's really where I

3:05

got to know the agriculture,

3:08

agriculture, world.

3:09

America's salad bowl.

3:10

Yeah. So if you guys have ever looked at

3:13

a satellite map of the U S

3:15

there's like this beautiful bright

3:17

green neon Crescent

3:20

in the Central Valley, and this is like the

3:23

Grapes of Wrath. What

3:27

was once the dust bowl? But it's now

3:30

one of the most agriculturally productive areas

3:33

in the whole

3:36

world and produces like, a ctually I was just reading

3:39

the other day, it's 99%

3:42

of the world's almonds. 80 -- not

3:45

almonds, I'm sorry. w a lnuts an d a bout 80%

3:47

of the almonds and then

3:49

40, 50% of pretty much you na me t he sort

3:52

of cash crop category like

3:55

tomatoes and specialty,

3:58

pr oduce and stuff.

3:59

Strawberries out there, right?

4:01

Strawberries, raspberries, yet and

4:05

yet, I t is sort of teetering on the

4:07

edge of failure. So somebody turns

4:09

the water off and that whole

4:11

Valley becomes the D ustbowl again.

4:14

And someone turning the water off i

4:16

s not just a, a figure of speech. I mean t

4:18

he water rights out there, really, really big

4:22

problem. So anyway, I just found

4:24

it really fascinating to be out there. I spent

4:26

a lot of time with folks that had composting

4:29

businesses there. And

4:37

that was really my, f ir st exposure to the industrial agriculture world.

4:39

Of course, there's

4:41

a lot of protein produced in the Valley too . s

4:44

o a lot of cattle

4:47

feed lots, a lot of, c om modity pig farms. And

4:49

if you've ever driven

4:52

by one of these things, just

4:54

like, t he stench, I can't imagine living

4:57

within, you know, few miles of them.

5:00

So that was

5:03

really my entree into, into agriculture. so w

5:05

e ended up, we moved back East, Ne

5:07

w England is sort of h

5:09

om e for both of us.

5:12

We got married, she, two o f u s r ead a

5:15

few books together that, may

5:17

be romanticize small scale New England farmering a little too

5:21

much. and s he decided she was going to work on

5:23

a farm that summ er after we moved

5:25

back. And it was just, you know,

5:28

going to be just this

5:31

summer. And that just this summer sort of

5:33

turned into, five y ears or so.

5:36

And this was both of you or just her at

5:38

that point?

5:41

Just her, I still had

5:46

a normal job. but , she was

5:48

very much inspiring in that

5:51

way. So That was really where Walden

5:53

was born out of i s seeing a lot of folks

5:55

and meeting a lot of

5:57

folks, b y virtue of my wife who a re in

6:01

New England farming that seem to be doing

6:03

everything right from

6:05

th e s ustainability and

6:07

animal welfare and a

6:10

s oil health perspective. But we ren't really in

6:12

a position to start selling their

6:15

products to the sort of main

6:17

line distributor or an ywhere else. so there

6:19

was sort of a missing link

6:23

there. so that was really, that was really the Genesis.

6:26

Yeah. And I think there's an inherent irony. You

6:29

have "Local" right in your name

6:31

and you're working with local farmers. And

6:37

so if someone is to be a local farmer, they can't

6:39

expand too far or they won't be

6:41

local anymore. They're going to be huge. So

6:43

it's like putting together lots of pieces

6:47

for a lot of different

6:49

farms.

6:49

Yeah, totally. I mean, I hope that that's the one

6:51

-- well not the one. Hopefully that's

6:53

one of many things we're doing that are valuable.

6:55

but that feels like the

6:58

primary one is like,

7:01

you've got this really

7:03

big complicated, fragmented supply chain of individual , family farmers.

7:05

so I was just looking at these statistics the

7:07

other day. We

7:10

work with about

7:13

75 different partner farms. and

7:15

the average size of

7:17

those farms , is something like

7:19

250 acres. The

7:22

largest of which is, maybe 2000

7:25

acres. And there's, there's only a

7:27

couple t hat a re over a thousand acres. So

7:29

it's, it's really difficult to

7:31

find contiguous acreage much larger than

7:33

a thousand acres in

7:36

the area.

7:37

Yeah. What is local? How do

7:40

you define local?

7:41

Yeah. we talk about it

7:43

as , States. So we work in New York and

7:46

New England and we really don't get to the Western half

7:48

of New York, but that for us

7:50

has felt like the most meaningful

7:54

thing, to consumers as

7:56

opposed to some sort of arbitrary.

7:59

You know, radius. Just thinking about like, this

8:01

is from my state or my r

8:03

egion.

8:04

Yeah. That makes sense.

8:06

I realize I didn't like really explain

8:08

what we do or what the --

8:10

Yeah,

8:10

tell

8:10

us

8:10

about

8:10

your

8:10

model!

8:13

So we work with , area

8:16

farms that produce 100 percent

8:21

grass fed beef, pasture-raised

8:23

pork, chicken and lamb. we do a handful of other

8:25

things like grass

8:28

fed butter, eggs , and some

8:32

ancillary products too . and we take

8:34

those products to our member

8:36

families that live from central New Jersey all

8:38

the way up to Portland, Maine. And

8:40

we sort of handle everything in

8:43

between. So we sell our products

8:46

in what we call a share program. So if you're

8:48

familiar with, like a vegetable CSA, we're

8:51

very much modeled on a similar type

8:53

model. So we buy exclusively whole

8:56

animals and then Break

8:59

them down into the, into parts and

9:01

pieces that are distributed amongst our member families

9:04

in the form of a share. So you sort of get

9:06

a different mix of cuts each

9:09

month. A h, so we do once a month

9:11

deliveries and then there's opportunity

9:13

to add c uts as you like

9:15

to your core share. Does

9:17

that make sense?

9:19

Yeah.

9:19

That's the short story.

9:21

But it's a little different than like a

9:23

traditional CSA, right? Because

9:25

you are shipping it to doors, where a lot of

9:27

times the CSA is , people might come and pick it

9:29

up? I guess sometimes people get them shipped

9:31

too...

9:31

Yeah. So when we, that's actually, that's a great point.

9:34

So when we first started, my wife and I

9:36

were in another

9:38

meat CSA , in an adjacent farm to the

9:41

one that she was working at

9:43

and the

9:45

experience was just a

9:48

h, t ough. Like we found it, for example,

9:50

incredibly challenging

9:52

to arrive between, I

9:54

think i t was like 10:00 AM and noon every

9:57

other Saturday or something for the pickup. And

10:00

I m ean, we didn't have kids at the time. We

10:02

weren't even that busy and it was just like impossibly

10:06

difficult for us to remember to do that

10:08

at that time. So i

10:13

t felt like a delivery was a really

10:15

big deal t o getting over that

10:18

barrier. There were

10:21

also a lot of

10:23

issues we had with not just the convenience aspect

10:25

of it, but th e c

10:28

onsistency of the product or the quality of

10:33

the product. The cutting. And so it

10:35

felt like

10:37

there was, a n eed there because we had

10:40

all these farmers

10:44

that, w ou ld love to get their product out to

10:47

more people, but for them, the marketing

10:49

and distribution and inventory

10:51

management and the customer service and all

10:54

thi s st uff that we try to

10:56

do, it's typically

10:58

not an area of interest amongst our partner

11:00

firms and, and not really a core ski ll se

11:02

t ei ther. So

11:05

henc e whe r e we c om e in.

11:07

Yeah. Scale. It makes sense.

11:08

Yeah.

11:09

I mean, what would you say makes, like if

11:11

you were to talk to the audience, what

11:14

makes this better then like going into

11:16

a supermarket and just picking up a steak?

11:22

Like Stop and

11:24

Shop or something?

11:26

Yeah, great question. So know I

11:28

think, I think we're trying

11:31

to align around the idea that we

11:34

are just trying to sell the absolute

11:36

highest quality product you can

11:39

buy. And to us that

11:41

means it'sconsistent in

11:44

terms of flavor and taste and , cut quality

11:47

and all of that. And what

11:49

allows us to make

11:52

that promise is this

11:54

direct relationship with local farms that are committed

11:57

to the same

12:00

ideals of

12:04

sustainability and and

12:07

, regenerative agricultural methods. so things

12:09

like rotating animals through the pasture on

12:11

a daily basis, being

12:13

committed to the health and fertility

12:16

of the soil.

12:18

1 00% grass fed and finished beef. So they're

12:21

not -- no grain feed

12:23

of any

12:25

kind. Th ere's n o manure

12:27

lagoons at ou r p ig farmers'

12:29

--

12:30

Good to know!

12:31

There's no , there's

12:33

no, you know, waste

12:36

disposal issues when you're raising

12:38

animals out in the pasture. So

12:42

all of those things sort of

12:44

add up to , a product that has

12:46

a different nutritional profile, a

12:48

different taste. And we

12:51

think overall just sort of flat out

12:53

a higher quality than a product you

12:55

could find in the , in the grocery store.

12:57

And presumably like this is better for

13:00

the farmer as well. Right ? Like,

13:02

working with you guys.

13:03

It's definitely better than for the farmer.

13:06

So , by way of comparison, the average

13:08

farmer takes home about 10 or

13:10

11 cents of the retail dollar.

13:13

And , and our farmers and

13:15

butchers together take about 55 cents of the

13:18

retail dollar, With

13:20

the farmer being the lion's share o f that. And

13:22

so it's definitely

13:24

better for the farmer. O ur farmers too,

13:27

they have restaurateurs all the time coming to

13:29

them and saying, Hey, I'll b

13:31

uy all of your sirloin steaks

13:33

o r all of your strip loins, you

13:36

know, name your price. For

13:40

the smart farmer, that's sort of like

13:42

a fool's errand because they don't,

13:44

they don't sell strip loins, they

13:46

sell cows or pigs.

13:48

Right. What happens to the rest of the animal?

13:51

Exactly. So I mean that's our whole

13:53

business. We talk about sort of operationally,

13:56

we're whole animal in whole animal out.

13:59

So the whole animal comes in one door and

14:01

the whole has got to go out the other door. So

14:03

we make a lot of

14:05

effort to balance the whole carcass and do

14:08

things like raw dog food and

14:10

dog treats and different organ blends and

14:12

such. a

14:15

nd, you know, really try to maximize the value

14:17

of all the parts and pieces

14:20

and that helps to deliver more value

14:22

to a f armers who in our view

14:24

a re again, really doing everything right

14:27

from a sustainability and

14:30

animal welfare perspective.

14:32

Do you think there's a complete correlation between sustainability

14:35

practices that are

14:37

the best for the animals and the

14:39

taste of the meat?

14:41

Oh yeah, totally. O

14:43

kay. I mean,

14:46

just anecdotally, I wish I

14:48

could show you some pictures while we're sitting here, but,

14:50

I typically show them to people when they first

14:52

join the company of like what

14:55

an industrial p ig facility looks

14:58

like. For example, it's

15:01

sort of the equivalent of like, imagine what your

15:04

health outcomes would be if you

15:06

w ere basically just sort of

15:09

couldn't sit up from your couch and w ere fed

15:11

potato chips all day. And so

15:13

if you don't think that's the right sort

15:15

of healthy environment for you to be in, why

15:17

you would think that you would get good

15:19

health outcomes from eating an animal that

15:21

was raised in those conditions,

15:25

i s, y eah. Is is sort of

15:27

anecdotal way to think about it. I

15:29

think more, more

15:32

s ort o f quantitatively,

15:34

there's a lot of good research

15:36

out there, particularly on t here carbon

15:39

aspect of that. So

15:44

White Oak Pastures is a, fa

15:46

rm down in Georgia that

15:48

is, so rt of amongst the leaders in

15:51

th is s ort of

15:53

whole regenerative movement and

15:56

they you know, recently did

15:58

a super interesting

16:01

third party stu dy de monstrating that, w

16:03

he n you raise animals regeneratively in

16:06

this way, y ou ac tually from a carbon

16:09

impact perspective, it's not just

16:12

better than conventional beef

16:14

for example. It's also better

16:16

than all the sort of fake meat

16:18

alternatives out there. And beyond

16:20

that it's

16:22

sort of beyond this idea of,

16:25

do in g less harm. It a

16:27

ct ually has a net negative

16:30

carbon impact. So

16:32

these are activities that -- that's why

16:34

we use and more people

16:36

are starting to use the word "regenerative" because

16:40

it's not, it's not the

16:42

sort of old environmental axiom

16:44

of doing less harm. It's actually a

16:46

net positive benefit.

16:49

Where does the net positive

16:51

carbon come from?

16:53

Yeah , yeah. Good question. So , it's

16:55

in the carbon sequestration in

16:57

the soil itself. So yeah

17:00

, when you re when you raise beef in

17:06

a feed lot , you

17:09

need to feed

17:12

them and they're so , confined

17:14

in a concentrated area that there's no way you

17:16

could grow enough food in the area that they're

17:18

standing to feed them. So you have to import

17:21

feed from somewhere else. You

17:24

also have to

17:26

fertilize that , feed with

17:28

something because we tend to grow it in

17:31

monoculture . It's corn and soy we're talking

17:33

about . So you've got

17:36

to apply synthetic

17:39

fertilizers. Herbicides and pesticides t

17:41

oo. Make the yields make sense.

17:44

So you've got a feed

17:47

problem and then a fertility problem.

17:50

And then also in these

17:52

tremendously concentrated conditions have

17:54

this waste disposal problem. So that's where

17:56

you get these m anure lagoons

17:59

that, y ou know, following Hurricane Florence

18:02

for example, North Carolina is a big p

18:04

ig production state. These

18:07

things overflow. Now you've got like -- I mean,

18:10

floods really suck, but toxic

18:12

floods are l ike, g

18:15

reat. Yeah. That's like really bad news.

18:18

s o these things overflow. It's a problem.

18:21

So in a traditiona -- I shouldn't

18:24

even say traditional b ecause that's giving it too much

18:26

credit. In the industrial c

18:29

ommoditized world, in a feedlot setting,

18:31

you've got these three distinct

18:33

problems that we look at and solve them

18:35

each individually. We're going to import the feed

18:38

somewhere else to grow the feed. We're g oing t o use

18:40

these artificial fertilizers, herbicides,

18:43

pesticides, a nd t o dispose of

18:45

the waste, we're g oing t o develop our own

18:47

really, really bad septic system

18:49

right next to this f

18:53

eedlot. Compare that to grass fed, w

18:55

here you have an animal out in the pasture.

18:57

So the feed problem is

19:00

the pasture itself. They're eating the feed,

19:02

it's available to them in the pasture. T

19:05

here's no manure lagoon because the waste that they're creating

19:08

is immediately trampled back into t he soil.

19:10

And it's what

19:15

provides the fertility for

19:17

the pasture, which is the food that they're eating.

19:20

So there's no three distinct problems.

19:23

There's one sort of symbiotic

19:26

cycle. And what breaks

19:28

that cycle is when you keep the cattle

19:30

on the same ground for too long. So

19:33

it's rotation through

19:35

the pasture. Typically they're moved every

19:38

single day. That is

19:41

sequestering the carbon in the form of

19:44

the waste that they're trampling back into

19:47

th e s oil. Now where you get a huge benefit

19:50

is where you put chickens in

19:52

c o ws o n the same pasture. Chicken

19:54

waste is very heavy nitrogen. Cattle

19:57

waste is very heavy carbon. That's

20:00

where you get this nitrogen fixing in the

20:02

soil. And that's where the,

20:04

that sort of doubles the carbon

20:06

sequestration impact. So

20:09

we have a handful of farms that do multi-species

20:12

like that and we're trying to encourage more

20:14

folks to do more of that. Whew.

20:17

That was probably more than you guys wanted ...,

20:20

No, it's really interesting. I think that's

20:22

beautiful. What's the -- is there like -- so you're

20:24

talking about whole animals in and whole animals out and

20:27

that's really great. Are there -- I was

20:29

interested when you talked about

20:31

chefs approaching farmers and saying, we just want your

20:33

sirloins. What's the hardest part of

20:35

the animal to deal with? Is there

20:37

a learning curve for customers? Do you

20:40

give them weird stuff they may not initially know how

20:42

to appreciate that they have to figure

20:44

out?

20:44

Yeah. Great question. So organs are

20:47

typically -- not typically are always excluded from the

20:49

share. So there are folks that want that sort of stuff and

20:52

they, they buy them separately. So it's

20:54

really on us to balance that sort of

20:58

stuff. There's also, a

21:00

nother way to think about it as I 'm on a typical

21:03

beef carcass, t hat carcass

21:05

is about 45% ground

21:07

beef. People don't

21:10

realize i t. I

21:12

t's like half i s hamburger. And

21:14

our shares are

21:17

not half hamburger. So we have a

21:20

lot of interesting food service,

21:22

like university partners that are big

21:25

buyers of ground beef. That's

21:27

typically the challenge most people would say in

21:29

the industry is, i s the

21:32

trim. And the reason is

21:34

because the dairy industry, almost

21:36

all of the ground beef you're eating in the

21:38

supermarket is from dairy

21:41

cows.

21:42

Really?

21:42

Yeah.

21:42

Something I didn't know.

21:43

Yeah, that's a ...

21:45

Fun fact. and so

21:47

as a result, there is

21:49

sort of theoretically more ground beef

21:52

out there in the market then there should be,

21:54

which means that I

21:58

can get out the chalkboard and walk through the math

22:00

if you really want to get into it. But it

22:02

means that the ground beef on an average

22:04

beef carcass sells at

22:07

a price that is typically below

22:10

the weighted average cost of the whole

22:12

thing. So put

22:18

differently, t he middle meats pay for

22:20

the whole operation.

22:22

And you know, we're not

22:24

t oo dissimilar t o ... from that.

22:26

That makes

22:29

sense. Yeah . Yeah. So you don't fob

22:31

this stuff off on your customers. You have other

22:33

customers separate from your shareholders who

22:35

take the organs off your hands and who buy the ground

22:38

beef. You're not going, you're not going to have a situation

22:40

similar to the vegetable CSA where you just get

22:43

rutabagas for months.

22:44

Definitely not. Definitely not. That was

22:47

something, you know, we really wanted to solve early

22:49

on was how do you figure out a

22:51

balance that, you know, sort of

22:54

optimizes the whole carcass while

22:56

meeting everyone's preferences and

22:58

such. A nd interestingly enough, I don't

23:01

know that I believed this was

23:03

going to be true, but it's largely true

23:06

for, for every person that,

23:09

y ou know, hates chicken

23:11

breasts, there's another person that loves

23:13

them. Chicken

23:16

breasts are an easy example.

23:17

Can you tell us a little

23:20

bit about the actual operation itself.

23:22

So the , the butchering and the packing and the delivery

23:24

and how you get it to customers. And

23:27

just a little bit about

23:30

that process foryou guys.

23:33

Yeah. So, Typically we'll have sort

23:36

of rolling contracts. s o we have a

23:38

commitment for a certain number

23:40

of animals per month. From what, you

23:43

know, an active farm. We

23:45

h elped to coordinate the logistics of getting

23:48

those animals to the

23:50

slaughterhouse at the a

23:53

ppointed time. And just to give you a sense

23:55

of scale, so, a

23:59

typical industrial s laughterhouse for beef

24:02

for example, Might do

24:04

anywhere from 10 -20,000

24:07

head in a single

24:09

day.

24:09

Do they run 24 hours?

24:12

Typically they would, they'll do two, they'll do

24:14

three shifts. So they'll do

24:16

two distinct shift in that cleaning

24:18

shift. so yeah, a lot of those plants are, they're

24:21

not slaughtering 24 hours a day, but it's open

24:25

24 hours .

24:25

Something's happening 24 hours a day.

24:31

Relative to, you know,

24:33

our local comparison, you know, our

24:36

partner processors will max

24:38

out

24:42

at anywhere from , 20-50 head in a day. So

24:44

just like a totally different

24:47

order of magnitude.

24:48

Off by a thousand.

24:50

Yeah. Very different scale. Yeah. So

24:52

that allows for quite

24:55

a bit more individual attention for

24:57

the animal, which we think leads

24:59

to different animal

25:03

welfare outcomes. And it

25:05

also yields differences in c

25:08

ut quality. So typically in an industrial slaughterhouse you

25:10

wouldn't be breaking things all the way

25:12

down to retail cuts. S o i t'd be shipped in

25:15

primals and such. But there's still a

25:18

lot of messiness that can occur,

25:20

right at that level that affects the quality

25:22

of the final

25:26

product. But essentially, yo u know, things are

25:28

broken down. Our specifications

25:30

brought back here to ou

25:32

r f ulfillment center. We

25:34

sort of pick and pack out of here and then run our

25:37

own delivery trucks out of here to al

25:39

l of our mem ber fa milies. The

25:42

pick and pack side of

25:45

that is crazy complicated in

25:48

terms of, h ow the animal

25:50

is balanced. So we have a handful

25:52

of algorithms trying

25:55

to balance th -- you know, what comes in

25:57

a carcass against

26:00

eve ryone's pr eferences and what they've gotten

26:02

historically and all of that. so

26:05

that's, s om ething we've developed over a long period of

26:07

time that I think is like on the

26:10

technical side of the things we do, one of

26:12

the more interesting, and it

26:14

's because like I said, tha t th e, if the core

26:16

equation is whole animal and whole animal out, we go t to ge

26:19

t really good at that for a good

26:21

customer experience basically. Yeah.

26:23

So for example, if you got,

26:25

I mean the idea of is wo rking properly

26:27

is if you got flank steak this month, you

26:29

don't get it next month and somebody who

26:31

hasn't had flank steak for a while

26:33

is more likely to get it.

26:36

Makes sense.

26:39

At what point did you need that? You started

26:43

in 2014. Is that right?

26:45

We did a small pilot program

26:48

of like 50 families in November

26:50

and December the year before. But yeah, we opened at the public

26:52

in 2014.

26:53

I'm just trying to imagine how this would work

26:56

at a smaller scale than what you're currently, so

26:58

it makes sense to me now. But I'm

27:00

trying to imagine you starting out and making

27:03

all of this work.

27:04

Yeah. So I got this really smart

27:06

idea that it

27:10

didn't make sense to pack the shares

27:12

beforehand and I was just going

27:14

to pack them in the back of the van. So

27:18

I had this refrigerated van and

27:20

then I would drive to these people's

27:22

houses and in their driveway

27:24

or in some cases in like a inappropriate

27:28

parking spot, blocking

27:30

traffic. I would get into

27:32

the back of the van and then sift through these

27:34

boxes ...

27:35

Trying to remember who had flank steak last week!

27:37

Yeah , exactly. And it's all sort of written on wet

27:40

paper that's like, ripping. And

27:44

I didn't have a digital scale. I had like

27:46

an analog fish scale

27:49

with a hook. And so it would like y

27:53

ou, you put, I w ould put t he stuff in the bag and

27:55

then h ang i t on the fish scale and then you've got to wait

27:57

like 10 seconds until it settles

28:00

on a weight. And then it's like, A w man,

28:02

I'm half a pound over. I g otta start

28:05

all over again. And it was literally

28:07

like 20 minutes while I'm sitting in

28:09

the back of this van. And so people

28:11

would come out of the house, like

28:13

knock on the door, like, is

28:16

everything okay i n t here? A nd I 'm like, yeah, it's fine!

28:19

Stay outside. I'll be right out. So

28:22

yeah, there was some mishaps, misdirection

28:26

along the way.

28:26

Like, you're not butchering it in the back

28:29

of the bed . Right?

28:32

I mean, there was maybe a point at which I considered

28:36

that too, but , you know,

28:39

missteps along the way, I guess.

28:41

Where would you like to see

28:43

the meat industry in

28:45

10 years since you're a business

28:47

that depends upon being local. I don't imagine that

28:49

you want to take over the whole country, you , but

28:51

like, what do you think would be a good thing

28:54

that could happen?

28:56

That's a

28:59

great question. I'd like

29:01

to see, I'd like to see people

29:05

eating less meat,

29:07

But feel really great about the me

29:09

at t hat th ey're e

29:11

a ting. And so in some cases, that does

29:14

mean spending a little bit

29:17

more, on a per unit basis. But

29:19

keeping your sort of overall meat budget the

29:22

same. And I think

29:24

your dollar goes further, certainly from

29:27

the farmer perspective and from th e e

29:30

cological environmental welfare perspective,

29:31

if thought

29:34

about in that way. So,

29:36

the way

29:41

we think about that

29:45

in the region is ma ybe a little bit

29:47

more ambiguous of just

29:50

contributing to this agricultural Renaissance that's going

29:54

on in the region. I say this all

29:56

the time. But th e av

29:58

erage age of farmers is declining

30:01

in the region. Th e size of

30:04

farms is declining.

30:04

Which yeah. In case people don't know,

30:06

in general, we're hearing always about a trend of

30:09

farmers getting older and

30:11

older.

30:11

Totally, everywhere else in the country. That's, that's

30:14

the case. And the number of farms is increasing.

30:16

So this is the only region in the

30:18

country where all those

30:20

indicators are going in what I see to

30:22

be there, right

30:25

direction. So, you know, o

30:28

ur, o ur vision is just to continue to build

30:30

on this community of people

30:32

that want to contribute to that.

30:34

So, we think that this

30:37

region of the country is uniquely suited to do

30:39

that for the reasons I talked about in terms

30:41

of the soil suitability

30:44

and c limactic suitability. And

30:48

then you've also got

30:51

this massive group of people that live

30:53

in the surrounding

30:57

metropolitan areas, that seem

30:59

to be moving along

31:02

the spectrum towards more local,

31:05

more whole real

31:07

foods. an d so combining those

31:09

two that's sort of continues

31:11

to be our vision of a

31:14

more sustainably fed region. And

31:17

then beyond the sort of medium term,

31:19

there is definitely the potential

31:21

for the Northeast

31:23

to feed itself from a

31:26

protein perspective. And so if we had to align

31:29

around any sort of longer

31:31

term grandiose vision, that would probably be it. It's

31:34

like, can, can this region actually produce

31:36

enough protein to

31:38

support, you kn o w, t he entire greater Boston

31:40

area, the entire New York

31:43

city, g re ater Metro area.

31:46

Beca use we, we definitely think the answer's yes.

31:49

I mean, is there anything else? I guess the only other parting

31:52

thing is, is there anything else you want

31:54

to talk about or say

31:56

or any story you want to tell?

31:59

I think one, one area I didn't touch on is

32:01

just, yeah , one

32:04

of the problems with the industrialized

32:07

food system is

32:09

that when you use

32:11

your food dollars at the grocery store,

32:14

the impact of those choices are

32:18

somewhere else and on

32:20

someone else. And they're sort of

32:22

out of sight and out of mind

32:25

. And that disconnect causes

32:27

a lot of problems, a lot

32:29

of environmental problems, a lot of ecological

32:31

problems. And frankly, regardless of your

32:33

politics, a lot of political problems.

32:36

Because in

32:40

the absolute, you go too far

32:42

down this spectrum and you

32:44

e nd up with something that looks like Hunger

32:46

Games, w here you've got these rural

32:48

s ectors sort of toiling on behalf

32:50

of this urban sector that, and

32:52

there's very few paths between them. And

32:56

so that's a core part

32:58

of what we do is trying to better

33:00

connect rural and urban.

33:03

Because when you have that connection and you see

33:05

the impact of your food dollars and

33:09

the stories of

33:11

the farmers that are working

33:14

e very d ay to produce the highest

33:18

quality food that they c an, you

33:22

tend to make choices

33:24

that better

33:28

support the surrounding ecological environment. You tend

33:31

to make choices that result in better outcomes

33:34

from an animal welfare

33:37

perspective. And it's maybe to boil

33:39

it down like

33:42

you don't, i t wa s about, I don 't wa n t to us

33:44

e a a bad word, but you know, you

33:47

don't, uh ...

33:47

This is an R-rated podcast,

33:49

we're all adults here.

33:52

Okay. Well you typically don't just, you know, go

33:54

to the bathroom in your

33:56

backyard. And so it's

33:58

the same situation of like, if it's within

34:01

your own community and there's people

34:04

you have a sort of, a sense of

34:06

who they are, t he impacts

34:08

are just much closer to home and

34:10

you s ort o f take care of it.

34:13

Yeah . You you feel like you have a stake .

34:16

Totally. And not to mention the fact that like, I

34:19

think this is a really

34:21

special part of the world. Attachment

34:24

to place has always been really, really important

34:26

to me and I'm sort of like a New

34:29

Englander through and

34:32

through and that makes it

34:35

, all the more special for me to like try to

34:37

build a business that's impactful

34:39

in the region. And I

34:41

would love for people to share

34:44

that appreciation for, you know, what,

34:46

what this region is about and why it's

34:49

special relative to every other region in the world. And

34:53

there's a lot of things we do that I

34:56

think that support

34:58

that vision of , of

35:02

New England's future.

35:05

Thanks so much for spending this time

35:07

with us sharing your expertise.

35:09

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

35:11

Thank you guys for coming. Really nice to meet you.

35:17

Thanks for listening to The Stories Behind Our Food

35:18

podcast by Equal Exchange, a worker

35:21

owned cooperative. Love this episode?

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35:27

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35:31

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35:34

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35:36

is produced by Gary Goodman with hosts, Kate

35:38

chess and Danielle Robidoux. Join

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