Ocean conservation isn’t always about what’s happening in the water—it’s also about the choices we make on land. In this episode, we speak with Maddie Hamann, a former oceanographer turned sustainable food entrepreneur. Maddie shares how her background in ocean science led her to co-found PACHA, a company that creates sourdough buckwheat bread using organic, regenerative practices. From nutrient cycles to sustainable packaging, Maddie explains how oceanography continues to inform her mission—even in the kitchen.
Sustainable food systems play a major role in protecting marine environments. Maddie breaks down why she and her partner chose buckwheat, how they built an ocean-friendly food brand, and how consumers can support businesses that align with ocean values. This conversation goes beyond the surface, connecting science, health, and sustainability in a delicious way.
Website: https://livepacha.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livepacha/
Follow a career in conservation: https://www.conservation-careers.com/online-training/ Use the code SUFB to get 33% off courses and the careers program.
Do you want to join my Ocean Community?
Sign Up for Updates on the process: www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp
Sign Up for Updates on the process: www.speakupforblue.com/oceanapp
Sign up for our Newsletter: http://www.speakupforblue.com/newsletter
Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3NmYvsI
Connect with Speak Up For Blue:
Website: https://bit.ly/3fOF3Wf
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3rIaJSG
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@speakupforblue
Twitter: https://bit.ly/3rHZxpc
YouTube: www.speakupforblue.com/youtube
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(01:00:00):
Welcome back to the podcast. We have a
special episode for you
today because this is an ongoing
thing that I've been trying to do for the
podcast. I talk a lot about oceans and
protecting the ocean.
And this is why you're here. You're here
because of how to protect the ocean.
That's the name of this
podcast. Well, we protect the ocean by
supporting businesses who
have values that are there for
that are good for the ocean. And today we
(01:00:21):
are showcasing one of
those businesses that talk
about these values that have these values
to not only just make people
happy, but also just because
this is what's important to them. You
know, protecting the
environment, making something
healthy, taking away chemicals from food.
And today we're going
to be talking to Maddie
Hemman, who's actually a former
(01:00:42):
oceanographer, well educated
oceanographer who is here to talk
about the business that she co-founded
with her husband called
Pacha, which is a buckwheat bread,
a loaf of bread that you can buy in the
US and you can enjoy. It's tasty. It's
healthy. It's made
with not only love, but
actually healthy things that are good for
(01:01:03):
your body, less chemicals or no chemicals
and just something that's really good.
She tells us how she makes the bread, how
they make the bread, how the company came
to be, how she went from oceanography to
supporting an organization or starting a
company, co-founding a company that has
to do with selling bread. We're going to
talk all about that on today's episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
Let's start the show.
(01:01:28):
Hey everybody, welcome back to another
exciting episode of the How to Protect
the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew
Lewin. And this is the podcast where you
find out what's happening with the ocean,
how you could speak up for the ocean and
what you can do to live for a better
ocean by taking action.
Now, today's episode, we're going to be
talking with Maddie Hemman, who is an
oceanographer and an engineer and someone
who's quite intelligent and says, you
(01:01:48):
know what, I want to make
a difference in the world.
So I am going to co-found a company that
sells buckwheat bread. Now, did I expect
that to happen when I first heard about
Patche, the company that she
co-founded with her husband?
No, I didn't expect to hear that one bit.
But as I got to know more and more about
the story, I started to think to myself,
I said, hey, you know what, this is
something that I think the
(01:02:09):
audience would really appreciate.
You know, somebody who changed their path
multiple times because they wanted to
have an effect on the planet. They wanted
to do something that's good, not only for
the planet, for the people who live on
this planet. And she does that for her
customers. She does that for the
company's customers. And they have values
that are good. And do they market based
on, hey, we do some good things. We have
(01:02:29):
really good values for the environment,
for the planet and for you? No. They say,
this is great bread. You're going to want
to eat it because it's tasty. And it's a
little good for you too, but it's really
tasty. You're going to want it. And
that's how they market it.
I thought it was a really good episode
that I think everybody should listen to.
So enjoy this interview with Maddie
Harmon, former oceanographer now
co-founder of Patra bread enjoy and I
will talk to you after.
(01:02:50):
Hey, Maddie, welcome to the how to
protect the ocean podcast. Are you ready
to talk about Patra and regenerative
agriculture all in the context of
protecting the
environment and growing a business?
Let's do this. All right. I'm excited for
this because as I mentioned, like this is
a fun podcast. The stuff I've been
wanting to do for a long time, I'm having
businesses on that are good for the
(01:03:10):
environment that allow us to make better
decisions for the ocean and for the
environment in general, reducing climate
change and so forth. And people can make
a buck. And it just goes to show that you
can you can grow your revenue and you can
protect the ocean and the planet at the
same time. So I'm really happy that
you're here to share your journey.
It's an interesting one because you do
(01:03:31):
have a background in oceanography. So
we're going to talk about that. But let's
get to know you a little bit and then
we'll get to know Patra a little bit. So
why don't you just let us know, Maddie,
who you are and what you do.
Yeah, so yeah, my name is Maddie Hamon
and I am the co-founder and director of
marketing for Patra. We make a an organic
gluten free sprouted buckwheat bread and
(01:03:53):
it is delicious and nutritious.
And at the same time, it is supporting
regenerative
agriculture and saving the planet.
That's awesome. That's awesome. Now you
got your start in oceanography like you
got that's that's what you went to school
for. How did all that happen? Did you
want to be an oceanographer when you were
(01:04:14):
a kid? Can you take us
through that process?
Yeah. So no, I wasn't the kid that always
like always dreamed of being a marine
biologist. I, you know, I, I was a I was
a super nerd in school was like always
the A plus student really good at math.
(01:04:35):
And my journey kind of was like, well, I
should just do the hardest thing because
it's always you can always switch out of
the hardest thing if harder, you don't
like it or whatever.
And yeah, so I went to school for civil
engineering for my bachelor's degree. And
sometime along the way, I realized like,
(01:04:56):
I don't really want to design highway
overpasses for the rest of my life. That
led me to fluid mechanics.
And my one of my mentors in college, I
took some of his graduate
level classes on turbulence and
he kind of introduced me to the idea of
oceanography. Okay. And, you know, from
(01:05:19):
the from the perspective of a civil
engineer, oceanography is studied like,
okay, well, how can we protect our
coastal infrastructure? How can we
understand how storms are
going to impact humans, etc.
Yeah, very much like the Army Corps of
Engineers, essentially.
Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And but
through that, I discovered like, oh,
(01:05:40):
well, there's people who are just purely
studying the science of the ocean and the
physics of the ocean. And so that is then
I found myself interested in that and
pursuing a graduate degree in physical
oceanography after college.
And again, it was in some ways, it was
(01:06:01):
like, this seems like a really good way
for me to use the very particular like
math and science skills that I gained to
help humanity. I was motivated by the I
mean, I came from the Midwest and my
understanding of what was happening with
the planet was like,
(01:06:21):
okay, the climate is changing.
And I was like, we must not know enough
about it. Otherwise, like, things would
be different. And so I thought going into
grad school that understanding more about
the climate and and how the ocean impacts
the whole ocean climate system would be
(01:06:43):
the best way for me to help with the
issue of climate change.
And I think, I mean, as I was incredibly
interesting and an amazing experience I
learned so much. And the more I learned,
the more I realized,
like, wow, we know a lot.
(01:07:05):
And I think that really knowing what was
happening was not the thing that was
going to start changing our behavior as a
species on this planet. And there's some
time in my third or fourth year, I
realized that I probably would not pursue
(01:07:25):
pure research as my as my life, I thought
I would maybe get into science
and education or, you know, some
something in that vein. Yeah. And then it
was in the last two years of my time as
an oceanographer that I met my partner,
Adam. He's my husband, he's my co
(01:07:45):
founder. And he introduced me to the
concept of regenerative agriculture.
And he has been he's a serial
entrepreneur. Okay. And he has founded
businesses, catering restaurants, and
(01:08:06):
then most recently, a business called
Boochcraft that makes a hard kombucha.
And he was in a, when at the time we met,
he was in the space of
(01:08:36):
there was modern
of his roles at those companies and found
himself in a place like, "Well, I'm ready
for the next thing." And that happened to
be this bread, what we
(01:08:58):
now call Pacha bread.
And yeah, he kind of got the ball rolling
and pretty soon in the
early days, I realized
that I wanted to be involved because I
saw the opportunity to
really use business to
(01:09:19):
shift the paradigm that the food system
is currently in, in a way
that actually sequesters
carbon and actually makes a big
difference for many
ways for the environment.
Yeah, it's really interesting. You had
quite the journey going
from engineering to, okay,
I know a lot about this, you know,
(01:09:40):
getting into grad school,
I want to learn more about
climate change and some of the things
that we are, you know,
what do we know and how
can I help, you know, contribute to that
knowledge? And you're
like, "Well, hold on
a second. We know way too much about
this, but we're not
changing." Like, which is so
true. Like we do know a lot. We're still
discovering things, but we do know a lot.
It seems like every time we discovered it
becomes more and more
grim and doom and gloom,
(01:10:02):
and then we're look around and people
aren't changing. Now you
happen to meet your now
husband who is also a serial
entrepreneur, but also for
like, seems like good for the
planet type of businesses. And then you
get into this. So you
basically went from, "I'm
going to do something and do something
(01:10:24):
really impactful and
hard to I'm going to change
the way we look at things so that we can
help this climate change thing. We know a
lot about climate change. Now we need to
act. So I'm going to
help in that action." That's
quite the jump from like doing research
to business and did
that. Did you find that a
(01:10:45):
difficult, like that to
be a difficult transition?
I mean, yes and no. I studied
observational oceanography.
So my group, my advisor and
my group, we would go out to sea and we
would, you know, we'd
write grants, we would build
instrumentation, we would take a whole
crew of engineers and
(01:11:05):
students out to sea to gather
data and then we would come back and
analyze the data. And so
really like two thirds of
my thesis, I spent more on the side of
like writing grants and
administrating my own.
I collected my own data and wrote my own
(01:11:26):
grant and everything. So a
lot of that was like managing
teams. Yeah. And so those skills
transferred pretty readily.
And then, you know, there's
this whole section of my brain that's
just like, knows a bunch
of differential equations
that I don't really need to know anymore.
I don't know how you make the bread, but
(01:11:47):
if you need to use
differential equations,
maybe you'll be that'll that'll help. But
for now, probably not.
But even going to like
you had that interest in maybe science
communication and going into
a marketing position or taking
a marketing position within this company
really is saying, hey,
look, like you look at science
communication in a way of like changing
behaviors around through the
communication. And now
(01:12:08):
you're like, okay, I want this behavior
change to really go
towards I want you to buy the
bread. And so how do I convince you to
buy this bread? And now there's always a
divergent way of doing things for me from
a scientific and from a nature
based perspective, I'm just like, get
this bread because it's it's probably
good for you, but it's also better for
the environment. So I'm
(01:12:28):
going to make a decision because it's
better for the environment. But a lot of
people who own these
businesses are like, I want
like people don't always buy that way.
I'm not the right I'm probably out of the
norm from from your regular
customer base. And you can
correct me if I'm wrong. But how was that
to going from convincing? Is it going
from convincing like, oh, look, this is
good for nature or to just be like, you
want to buy this product because it's
(01:12:49):
good for you. It tastes good. You know,
it's a different way of looking up bread.
Like, how do how is that transition going
from a very like, you know,
oceanographic, very to the point type of
of writing style and communication style
to, hey, this is this is some fun bread
for you to eat. And it's good for you.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say it's a
(01:13:10):
different kind of to the point. But
you're you're totally spot on. And what
it's one of the things that has been,
it's been a learning piece for me. And as
you know, as somebody coming from a
science background and into the world of
marketing, it's like, you, you're doing
this dance where you're, you're you are
in a way, communicating, like trying to
(01:13:33):
get a message across.
But you have to be meeting people where
they're at. And frankly, most people
don't don't care about the sustainability
piece like, yeah, they could say that
they care. But when push comes to shove,
it's like the bread's gotta the bread has
to be meeting a need of there's a lot of
(01:13:56):
people, a lot of people's
needs are in the cost arena.
And our bread is not the cheapest bread
on the on the shelf. So the thing that we
have to really lead with is like, hey,
this bread, it's, it's better for you.
That is much more motivating for people
than this bread is better for the planet
(01:14:18):
that you live on. It's like, it's too
abstract a concept for people to say, I'm
going to spend $2 more on a loaf of bread
because it's gonna sequester some carbon
or something. No, people
it's more of an afterthought, right?
Like, so say I'm sharing the bread with
somebody and like, oh, this is really
good. I'm like, yeah, it's really healthy
for you. It's got all this. It's got this
amount of protein, this, you know,
(01:14:39):
reduced carbs and stuff like that. Then I
can say, oh, by the way, it's also good
for the environment. And they're like,
oh, that's cool. But this really tastes
good. You know, like, that's probably
it's more of like the after like the
secondary thought afterwards and be like,
oh, yeah, by the way, they do this new
agricultural thing. And if you're
interested in agriculture, then maybe you
go on with that conversation. Is that is
that pretty much on point?
Yeah, that's on point. And it's, and it's
(01:15:00):
like, it's on point. And I'll just put
some language to it. It's, it's a
customer retention tactic more than
anything else. So someone starts buying
our bread. And we don't like we don't
lead our advertisement, our hook isn't
like, bread, that's safe, you know,
that's not the hook. The hook is this
(01:15:21):
bread is tasty. It's allergen free. It's,
you know, like got good, complete,
plant based protein, etc. And then, you
know, they start getting our emails. And
emails, we start talking about like, Hey,
did you know that this bread was grown
with regenerative buckwheat? Or Hey, did
you know that our, our packaging is fully
compostable, like home
(01:15:43):
compostable. And then
it's where the values of the company make
a difference. Yeah, yeah. And people
start realizing like, Oh, this bread,
this company is really cool. I want to
keep buying from this company. I'm going
to convince my kids to eat this bread.
Yeah, even if it, you know, like, even if
it's not the first thing that their kids
are like, yeah, you know, yeah, it's a
(01:16:04):
state. I mean, let's be honest, like
bread is a staple in a lot of households,
right, especially in North America, bread
is a staple. And so, you know, I grew up
toasted in the morning,
or I'll have a sandwich or, you know, so
it's part of that, that process. But
lately, it seems as though over the past
maybe decade, bread has become a bit of
like regular bread, your typical bread
(01:16:26):
that you buy in a grocery store. People
have had gluten allergies, you know,
people like, well, it has a lot of
complex carbs. So it's not like, or hard
to break down in the body, you know, it's
going to create like, it's not going to
be healthy for you. If you want to lose
weight, or you want to be in shape, you
lose your bread, you feel better, all
this kind of stuff. And this way, I'm
looking at your weight, you know, I'm going to be like,
you know, on my website, it's like, for
people who've given up on bread, it's
(01:16:47):
such a great message. Because so many
people have been like, you know, screw
that, I'm just gonna avoid bread
altogether. But people love bread. I love
bread. I have like, thoughts of my dad
when I was younger, like on a Sunday, and
eating like T biz and, you know, in front
of the TV with butter and stuff. And but
like, now I don't do it, because I'm
like, Well, this bread's not good for me,
the ones that I buy at the grocery store.
How do I get good bread? So I think I
(01:17:08):
love this messaging. Because it's really
just being like, this is a new way of
thinking of bread where you can have it.
You know, it's almost like have your cake in your bread. And I don't think I can have it.
you to have your bread and eat it too,
where you don't have to
feel sorry for yourself
after you drink, after you eat it, right?
So I think that's a
really interesting messaging
to get to. I love
that. I like that aspect.
I might steal that, have your bread.
Yeah, there you go. Right?
(01:17:30):
I'm not bad. I'm going to get for a
little bit of marketing.
But let's talk about the
bread. Like why is it, like you mentioned
it a little bit before
about regenerative agriculture,
like how is this bread so different than
the bread that we would
like sort of the quote
unquote typical bread that we
would see in a grocery store?
(01:17:51):
Yeah. Okay, so there's two there's two
like important parts of
this. One is the actual
bread itself and why it's different
nutritionally ingredients
wise. So our bread is we make
the bread from whole groats of growth
seeds, buckwheat seeds.
Yeah. Buckwheat is not wheat.
(01:18:15):
It's completely gluten free. It actually
the plant is it doesn't
it's not like a grass.
It's not a grain. It's like this little
flat. It's like these
little white flowers that
have like a very green leafy plant and
it's a cover crop. So
it's completely different
than wheat. It's a totally different
thing. High in protein.
(01:18:38):
It's one of the only complete
plant based proteins. You know, you got
like your quinoa, your
pumpkin seeds, your hemp.
And buckwheat is one of the only it's
like nine or 10 plant
based protein sources that
are complete. And so and then we, we
(01:19:00):
actually don't use flour
to make our bread. We soak
the whole seeds. So that that process
actually starts removing
what are called anti nutrients
that bind to the nutrients that are in
the bread. Normally
those things would just cause
you to pass some of the nutrients that
(01:19:21):
are available from
waste. Yeah. Yeah. And then
we, we blend it, we ferment it and the
fermentation process, we use a wild
fermentation. We don't
add any yeast, but the, the yeast that
are on the buckwheat
groats ferment the bread.
It begins, it kicks off the digestion
process. So it's like
almost like it's predigested.
(01:19:42):
So the bread is really easy to digest.
It's full of nutrients.
Buckwheat's really high
in magnesium, which is nutrient that most
people are missing. And it's like anybody
can eat this bread unless they're
allergic to buckwheat,
which is like 0.0001% of the
North American population. Okay. So it
(01:20:03):
really is like it's, and
it just feels amazing. Yeah.
It feels really good in the body and I
eat it every day, like
multiple times a day. And
you don't get like that. You know, I have
some people they have
like, I've had bread
before, like I said, I love bread and I
feel groggy after I feel
kind of like, you know,
sluggish after and you're just like, why
(01:20:24):
did I have so much bread and that kind of
stuff? Almost to the point where like, I
don't want, if I have
a hamburger, a lot of
times I just have the patty. I don't have
the bread that goes
with it because I don't
want to feel crappy after. So this you're
saying you actually
don't feel that you just
feel, you feel maybe energized or
something like that. You
just feel good. Like you can
just go on with the rest of your day
without being affected.
Yeah. It just feels good.
(01:20:44):
And like, you can eat a couple of slices
of Pacha bread and you'll
be full for the morning,
you know, like, yeah, that's great. Quick
sugary head. You get
level of boost and crash.
Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. So yeah. And
now like that's,
that's the first part of it.
And then there's another part, which I
(01:21:05):
assume is how it's, it's
grown and, and things. Yes.
Yeah. And so then the second piece about
the bread is, and this is
the piece we don't always
talk about first thing, but all of our
buckwheat is grown by certified
regenerative farmers.
And for, for your listeners who aren't
familiar with regenerative agriculture,
(01:21:27):
the basic idea is that regenerative
farmers are taking care of
their soil. So by taking care of
the soil, they're doing a few things.
They are, they are, well, they're
turning, they're turning
carbon from the atmosphere into soil
carbon. They're making a really healthy,
(01:21:50):
robust soil ecosystem
so that, you know, you can imagine like,
when you, when you have
like a new bag of potting soil,
right? And you, you can just see that
it's like, it's all fluffy and airy and
healthy and you pour
some water on it and it soaks it up like
a sponge versus like compacted dirt from
(01:22:13):
your kids playground or
whatever. Yeah. It creates this, this
ecosystem, this network that
has air and it, and it allows
life to move through it. And the life is
what's storing the carbon,
all of the little critters
that are carbon-based life forms. And
then, like I, like I
mentioned, that soil is able to retain
(01:22:34):
water. So regenerative farm. Much better
than what you would
normally, like regular farming and
regular soil, right? Yeah, exactly. So
like, yeah, if you'd imagine on a, on a,
on a conventional farm,
you've got compacted soil that you are,
you're, you know, you're tilling the
field, you're adding
in your, your synthetic fertilizers to be
(01:22:57):
able to grow something
there because there's, you know,
the soil is lifeless. Right. And then
when it rains, a bunch of
that dirt is being washed off
the field. So we have major flooding
issues across the country.
I mean, in California, I'm
especially aware of it, but what, what
you'll see in areas where there are
(01:23:17):
regenerative farms is like
the, the conventional farms, if there's a
big rain event, they've just got like
ditches full of like
red, you know, muddy water. And then you
go onto the, onto the
regenerative farm. And there's not
even really a flooding issue at all,
because the soil is taking up the water.
(01:23:39):
This is so crazy too,
because like you think if you, if you
look at how water moves nowadays,
especially when we get these
bigger rainfalls due to climate change
and more sort of extreme weather
patterns, even just regular
weather patterns, you start to see water
move differently. And people are
wondering what is going on? Is it the way
you know, we're routing water, you know,
that which is, which is part of it, but
(01:23:59):
we never really talk about how
soil changes over time, especially when
we're farming everything, we go into like
monoculture type of agriculture,
we're going to like soil impacted, and we
don't talk about how
important it is for soil to be in,
in quote unquote healthy shape. And you
(01:24:20):
know, this is regenerative farming
practice, which is what we used to do
back in the day when we needed the soil
to be to be good. We got out of that for
some reason, and because maybe it was a
quicker return, I'm not sure. And now
we're, we're starting to see some some
companies go back to it. It's just insane
to me to really think about and we don't
(01:24:42):
document that we don't talk about it as
much as we should, to say, hey, we're going to do this.
And if we're going to do this as much as
we should, to say, hey, you know what, if
we take care of our soil, like farmers
take care of our soil, they're allowed to
take care of the soil, we will get a much
better system, like just environmentally,
not only from a climate change
perspective, but just from a safety and
water movement perspective. Totally.
(01:25:03):
Yeah. And like, I mean, since we're on
the water, there's more about
regenerative agriculture, but when on the
water perspective, you know, like, in the
oceans, there are there are huge issues.
Yeah. Dead zones just from
the nutrient runoff. Oh my gosh.
I mean, huge issues, the Gulf of Mexico
is like, yeah, I used to work in there.
(01:25:24):
Yeah, it's not really. Yeah. But, you
know, so the one regenerative agriculture
is removing the need for
those synthetic inputs.
Yeah, you know, like, or at least
significantly reducing it so that you
don't have this issue where people are
just dumping nitrogen onto the onto the
(01:25:45):
soil. And then the rain is washing it off
down to the waterways.
But there's also, you know, there's a lot
of there's a lot of issues on our reefs
and in our in our coastal zones, just
from sediment itself, like, yes, I didn't
run off affecting the quality, the water
quality, the, you know, the marine life
(01:26:06):
that's in the coastal zones, sometimes is
damaged or killed by
overloaded sediment from the water.
Yeah, I think about just the impact of
the Mississippi, how far it reaches into
the Gulf of Mexico, that current that
comes out of the Mississippi. I mean,
oftentimes the impacts of hypoxia from
the just from the nutrient pollution and
(01:26:29):
the phytoplankton
growing and won't get into it.
But you can go all the way to Texas, like
it's huge. And just the sediment carries,
you know, pretty far out there in the
middle of the Gulf of Mexico or in the
middle of like the part the northern part
of the Gulf of Mexico.
And it's just it's insane to to think
about we don't talk about it a lot. But
it's insane to even think about how that
(01:26:50):
soil that's going there could be already
impacted from fertilizers from chemicals
that are used all the way up
and down the Mississippi River.
You know, that's obviously the major
river in the US, but other rivers are
pretty much impacted very similar. Just
not maybe not to that, that size because
it's just such a big, such a big river
(01:27:11):
and travel so far up up the Midwest.
For sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And so like, like I said,
there's other, we
mentioned the, the chemicals.
And so like, oh, swimming
in the Ohio River. Oh, yeah.
But yeah, the you know, the other the
(01:27:32):
other major thing that is a boon for the
environment and a boon for people's
health is that regenerative agriculture
is essentially like farming in a way that
the ecosystem is in balance.
So we have an issue with pests.
You know, like, an example, slugs on an
(01:27:53):
on an orchard. Cool. Well, we just let
our ducks in and the ducks. Yeah, slugs.
Like, we try not to separate the systems.
Right. Right. The systems are intertwined
and the animals are a part of the of the
cult. That's just one piece of
regenerative agriculture.
And then, you know, on a on a greater
(01:28:13):
level, just having more diversity in the
plant life. So rather than having acres,
hectares of of one plant when like, you
know, sometimes one genetically modified
plant that has a lot
of the same genetics.
If a pest comes in or if a disease blight
(01:28:35):
comes, it's going to knock everything
out. Yeah. So that's why they have to use
the fungicides, the herbicides, all this,
you know, on those plants to protect them
and in regenerative agriculture, the idea
is, well, if there's more diversity and
if if the fields are smaller and more
spread out, then those kinds of diseases,
(01:28:57):
they just can't travel because there's other, there should be more.
There's just more genetic diversity. And
a lot of times, too, like because of the
biodiversity present a lot of the night,
I don't know an example off by heart, but
a lot of the times any invasive species
or any species that comes in that could
harm a specific culture.
(01:29:18):
In this case, the buckwheat might be
deterred by other animals present or
other plants that are present that would
ward off these types of invasive or, you
know, animal life or disease that could
be that could alter, you know, the growth
and the health of the buckwheat or
whatever your culturing.
(01:29:39):
Now, so this is interesting because he
said something that really kind of made
me interested because I've been thinking
about business and how everybody wants to
grow their business and grow and grow and
grow. And it's got to be big. It's got to
scale. It's all this.
When you have smaller, I guess, landmass
or keeping it the the the I guess the
growth of the buckwheat smaller because
(01:29:59):
you have all this biodiversity, can you
have a business that's sustainable, that
can still bring in revenue without, you
know, because you're having a smaller
area, maybe without impacting, you know,
your bottom line or just sort of your
lifestyle that you prefer?
Like, is it a change in it's a change in
mindset? Maybe you're not growing all the
(01:30:20):
time? Or is that in my wrong? Is it a
change in mindset when you have a company
that uses regenerative agriculture
compared to the others?
I assume that's the benefit for the
others. You can scale really, really big
and grow as much as possible. But there's
a cost to that in terms of the
environment here. You're keeping it
small, but keeping the environment intact
(01:30:40):
plus probably less
upkeep and less chemicals.
Yeah, I mean, that that's an that's an
interesting question. And I mean, there's
certainly there's certainly issues where
it's like, okay, regenerative
agriculture, great solution for climate
change, but it's not like we can flip a
switch and turn all of our fields onto
(01:31:03):
regenerative agriculture right away.
But you know, from like from our from the
perspective of our farmers, a lot of them
are already growing, you know, they have
their fields are their fields are
separated and they have they have certain
things happening on
different parts of their property.
(01:31:25):
Gotcha. So we just one aspect of their
farm. Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of
like crop rotation is a part of it too.
So you can actually have quite a large.
Yeah. Like, you can you can have a large
farm that that farm is buckwheat. But the
(01:31:45):
it may just be that year to year they
rotate. Yeah, where that is being grown.
And yeah, that alone.
And that helps with the the nutrient
profile of the soil and right and the and
the bio ecosystem, the this and even from
a farmer's perspective, do they like it
(01:32:06):
more like regenerative agriculture than
sort of the what has become the
conventional agriculture?
Yeah, I'm just gonna say yes. And but
they may not know it yet.
Okay, so benefits for the farmers, you
know, for sure, they you know, they're
(01:32:28):
they there's so many issues with farmers
and people in rural areas with that where
they spray a lot of life say a lot of
incidents of leukemia cancers, all many,
many, many health issues that arise from
being exposed to those chemicals.
And we've seen like the movies about
Monsanto and like, you know, taking over
specific areas and taking over farmers
(01:32:50):
and seed, you know, genetic, genetically
modified seeds and stuff like that.
There's a lot of bad for business as well
as bad for health,
like human health, too.
Exactly. So there's the health side. And
then, yeah, that also, so what, what has
happened in our farming system, you know,
kind of going back to when we shifted
away from regenerative agriculture, we
(01:33:12):
created these, these synthetic
fertilizers, and most of them actually,
you know, a lot of them were created kind
of in the post World War Two era, where
the chemical manufacturers were needing
to figure out what to
do with their plants.
Yeah, plants and they're going to produce
so. So chemical fertilizers and, you
(01:33:35):
know, and it really like it was a miracle
thing you could you could improve your
crop yields by 5x by
inputting this this chemical.
And then it was kind of this like this
loop because every year you need to put a
little bit more to get the same return on
your on your field because you're not
(01:33:56):
taking you know you you're not taking
care of the soil, you're
relying on these chemicals.
And so what's happened is a lot of the
farmers find themselves in a cycle where
they need they need the the synthetics in
order to make the way they farm work and
a lot of them you know they learned how
to farm from their dad, they've been
doing it this way for 30 years.
(01:34:19):
And so it's hard to change your ways and
it's hard to learn something new. And so
it's not it's not always an easy sell to
be like you really should be growing your
food regeneratively.
Like just because they're like, well,
I've always done it this way I don't want
to change. But the farmers who do shift.
They want regenerative regenerative be
(01:34:40):
grown food can often bring
in a premium price for them.
They can make more money on their crop,
but they also can reduce their their
inputs, like they don't have to spend
money on the fertilizers and the
pesticides and the herbicides.
So it's just a win all around really.
(01:35:03):
Yeah. And plus they're not exposing
themselves to these chemicals too.
There's a danger in working with these
chemicals. You have to be careful you
have to wear certain types of gear and so
forth to be an accident happen.
Like we obviously they try and reduce
them, but accidents happen. Yeah, there's
a really there's a really excellent
documentary called Kiss the Ground, which
gives a really good perspective on some
(01:35:24):
of the regenerative farmers takes on
this. And yeah, it's it's powerful.
It's powerful. I mean, and it takes I
think it takes these types of
documentaries to educate people like
potential consumers are just people in
the US and Canada and elsewhere where
regenerative practices are trying to be
put back in place, but are not. And we're
(01:35:44):
looking at what our system has become.
You know, you in marketing, you're trying
to tell people about the benefits of of
this bread and and like made from
buckwheat and and how it good like I'm
looking on the website, you get some
pretty great reviews here for people. Did
it is does it take a lot to get people to
try it to try your bread?
(01:36:10):
Um, like is it like a I guess I get you
know, from a digital perspective when
you're marketing and there's emails going
out or you have an ad on YouTube or you
have an ad on or wherever you place your
ads or wherever you are present in terms
of organically trying to educate people.
Does it take like a certain amount of
times before someone's like, no, you know
what, I'll try it or is it more of like
(01:36:31):
word of mouth is really helping spread as
people are trying to try this.
I mean, it's a little bit of it's a
little bit of both. So Pacha bread and
like I mentioned, it's not the cheapest
thing on the on the shelf. So we don't
have the benefit of like, Oh, well, this
is the cheapest one. So I'm
just going to grab that. True.
But in terms of like, in
terms of conversion rates
(01:36:53):
and costs per
acquisition, like, we're not in like,
it's not like we have to pay way more
than the next company, you know?
We're on par with what we
would expect in that zone.
So it's not necessarily, it's not hard
to give people to try it.
(01:37:14):
It's not harder than we
would expect it to be.
Yeah.
(laughs)
Yeah, and it really depends.
Like, you know, some customers,
like it's just the thing
they've been looking for,
especially for people who are allergen,
like really allergen free, like celiac,
and like, yeah, just
can't eat any of the--
(01:37:35):
Yeah, makes it an easier decision.
Yeah, a lot of the gluten-free breads
have like psyllium husk and guar gum
and different kinds of binders
that are not actually
like super digestible.
So a lot of people who have inflammation
and like irritable
bowel syndrome, et cetera,
they can't even really
eat the gluten-free options
that exist, so it's a hard thing.
(01:37:56):
I know you're gonna
be polite and say this,
but a lot of people that I
know have gluten allergies
eat gluten-free bread
and they say it sucks.
(laughs) Yeah. It's just a taste.
It's from general, like,
not only like the irritation
and stuff like that from it,
but also they just say
it doesn't taste good.
You know, they don't like the taste,
they don't feel good after,
just like you
mentioned before, like this.
It's a tough ask, especially, you know,
when you have to make that change, right?
(01:38:18):
And you're trying to find something new.
Yeah, and you know, pacha bread is,
it's not trying to be white bread.
I think it's the other thing. Right.
It's just like, in some ways,
there's a lifestyle shift that happens
when you start eating pacha bread
because you're not consuming it.
Like, I don't make
sandwiches with my pacha bread.
(01:38:39):
I make like open-faced sandwiches
or I kind of use them as like English,
we have English muffins
and I like to make like
egg sandwiches on that.
Oh yeah. But it's, yeah,
it's just like a slightly different,
it's almost its own category of food.
So when you really
getting people into pacha bread,
like once people are in, they're like,
I'm never going back, but.
(01:39:00):
I see that, I see that
review on there, yeah.
Yeah, totally.
However, we are, we
just released tortillas.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, and they're incredible.
They are made with the
same base as our bread.
So it's still, it's like two ingredients.
It's just buckwheat and salt.
And yeah.
(01:39:22):
No chemicals, nothing else
added, like none of that.
Nothing.
They're, and so they're
super clean, allergen front,
allergen free, gluten free.
And they, yeah, they're
like, they perform somewhere
between a corn
tortilla and a wheat tortilla,
obviously like the
gluten in a wheat tortilla,
just like you can do, you can fold it,
(01:39:43):
you can stretch it, whatever.
That's really hard to
achieve with gluten free.
For sure, yeah.
Yeah, but our tortillas, they're like,
we actually have quite a
few people at our facility
who are from Mexico
who do the production.
They're like, this
is, this right here now,
this is a good tortilla,
(01:40:03):
like this feels authentic.
That's a good thing to
have when you have like people
who have tortillas on
a fairly regular basis,
being like, yeah, this is what we want,
like this is the
stuff, yeah, that's awesome.
So like when it comes
to the company here,
and just, obviously the values are high
(01:40:24):
in terms of clean eating,
less chemicals, no chemicals,
buckwheat, going a
different way of farming,
regenerative farming, it's
a big part of your values
as a company.
And like, as you mentioned,
it's not necessarily
what you're marketing on
because you want
people to taste the bread,
you want people to go with what has it.
(01:40:44):
Like how big of a part is
the value part of your company
to you as well as the staff?
I believe there's, there's what about,
is how many people
work for you right now?
We've got like 25.
25, okay.
So like, you know, small
to medium sized company,
but like how important
(01:41:05):
is that to the staff,
to you, to your husband,
like a co-founder Adam,
like how big was creating
those, that value system,
not just for the product, but
just for yourselves as well,
you being an oceanographer,
understanding climate change,
understanding what it can do,
understanding that the powerful impact of
regenerative agriculture.
When we talk a lot about ESGs and all
(01:41:27):
these types of things,
when we talk about values for companies,
how big was that for all of
you to create those values?
I mean, I'll just say that the company
wouldn't exist without the values.
True, true.
Like, you know, Adam and
specifically our founding team,
(01:41:49):
the people who like birthed it,
we were clear that this was why we were
making this company.
Yeah.
Like,
it wasn't like, it wasn't like, let's
make as much money as possible and that
will screw the rest.
It's let's make a great product for
people like that is healthy for people.
(01:42:09):
That's, that's good for the environment.
And let's make some money while we do it.
It's still a company, still for profit
company, but we want to have,
it has to be this, it has to have
regenerative agriculture, less,
like no chemicals, be good for people, be
healthy, be healthy for the environment.
That was the big thing, right?
Yeah. And I mean, and I also think that
(01:42:30):
there, there's a genuine trust.
I'm going to believe, isn't quite the
word, it's genuine trust that this is
where business has to go.
Yeah.
Like we, we, we have to start doing this
and Pacha is on the leading
(01:42:51):
edge of a movement that is,
that is building and unfolding and yeah,
if we're going to have food
farmed from our farmlands,
we have to start shifting, you know,
there's like an estimate that there are
60 harvests left from most of like 95%
(01:43:12):
of the farmable land in our country.
60 harvest is like 30 years if we keep
going the way we're
going. That's terrifying.
That is terrifying.
That is very terrifying.
But when you install things like
regenerative agriculture, now you're
looking at extending that like,
Indefinitely. If you truly are caring for
(01:43:34):
the ecosystem and nurturing, like just,
if the main thing you're caring for is
the soil, the soil is
going to care for you.
Yeah. Now, here's a question that you may
or may not be able to answer because
like, obviously
here's the problem is like,
you know, we have a problem where we have
60 harvest left, about 30 years left of
agriculture and within the United States.
I'm sure it's very similar to Canada.
(01:43:57):
Regenerative agriculture really will help
to make it indefinite.
How do we make that shift on a larger
scale, not just company after company,
but just being like,
we need to make this.
Is that a policy decision that needs to
take place to really move the needle or
is it more of just education
for business owners or both?
Yeah, I mean, to move at the pace that I
(01:44:20):
think we need to move at, it's, you know,
attack on all fronts.
I do think that policy is going to be key
in making the shift. What exactly, what
kind of policy that needs to be,
it's hard to say, you know, like one of
the issues with regenerative agriculture
(01:44:41):
is that it's actually not well defined.
Mm hmm. Gotcha. So kind of like, you
know, you got your organic certification
and one of the issues with the organic
certification was like,
we had to define it really well in order
to make it a USDA certification. And in
doing so, we actually, like, some of the
(01:45:07):
heart of what it was got lost and like,
you know, you had to have hydroponically
grown organic, organic certified produce,
which is like, well, it's not really what
we were trying to do with organic
certification, but technically they are
meeting all the standards.
But, you know, in terms of making policy,
(01:45:30):
like, yeah, I think one of the most, for
me, at least one of the most interesting
ideas is just implementing a carbon tax.
I think would be is potentially one of
the most effective ways, but then
assessing how, how, you know, like if
(01:45:53):
there were carbon tax and you were just,
well, okay, there's two pieces.
If there was a carbon tax and the and the
you also most we didn't say this, but
most of the pesticides herbicides and the
synthetic fertilizers, those are all
petrochemicals.
They're all from petroleum.
(01:46:15):
Right, right. So you're
reducing that right away. Yeah.
You know, you're going to have to tax
that. Yeah, yeah. And get rid of the
subsidies that currently exist for the
wheat, soy and corn that are growing in
this country. We have, you know, we have
the government is paying farmers to over
produce crops from these conventional
(01:46:36):
systems that that would not that would
not be viable in the
marketplace without the subsidies.
Right. People wouldn't buy them.
Companies wouldn't buy them if they had
to pay full price for them. Of course, if
the farmers had expensive. Yeah. Yeah.
And so I think on a policy level, there's
a lot that can be done. And it's it's
complicated. It is. Well, it's also
(01:46:59):
complicated. Yeah. And so many people
have like, it's so ingrained in our
system now that the current system of
farming that it would be difficult to go
back to regenerative farming, just like
renewable energy versus, you know, fossil
fuel energy. It's it's
it's it's it's not an easy.
Switch if it was easy, it would probably
been done already. But there's a lot of
people who have a lot of money tied into
these systems. And, you know, they do not
(01:47:21):
want to change. And they want to keep
their lifestyle and they want to keep
their money that they make. And it's and
it can be very difficult. But I love the
fact that, you know, Patches is like
spearheading, just be like, you know
what, like, we're just going to continue
going what we're going to do. And we're
going to show that it can be done. It can
be done well. And we can be successful at
doing it. And I think we just have to
(01:47:41):
ensure that our values are supported.
We have to ensure that our values stay
the same and that we continue to
challenge ourselves to continue to either
grow our product type or even just make
our product even better and better as we
go along as we do more and more research.
And I do love that now to just to kind of
let people know, Patrick, where can
(01:48:01):
people find Patrick to
pick it up and give it a try?
So easiest place, Whole Foods were
nationwide in the frozen section. OK. And
we also sell our bread nationwide through
our website, livepacha.com. There's also,
you know, other independence and some
smaller change chains in Southern
(01:48:22):
California and the Pacific Northwest.
If you want to try to find a physical
location, we have a store locator on our
website that you can check out.
Yeah. Awesome. If you want the tortillas,
you got to buy them online. Wonderful. I
mean, this is great. I think this is
really this is really great to see this
(01:48:45):
company continue to do what it's supposed
to do and to be good for not only the
people that use it, but
also for the environment.
And I love that. I love how you came on
here and spreading your message. It's
fantastic to have you on. I'd love to
have you back on, Maddie. And maybe Adam
would come on next time to you and talk
about more about some of the products
(01:49:05):
that you're doing and some of the more
about regenerative agriculture.
I think we're just scratching the surface
when we come in, how it could be
implemented on a wider scale. But we want
to thank you so much for coming on the
show and sharing your story. Thanks so
much. It was great to be here.
Thank you, Maddie, for joining us on
today's episode of the How to Protect the
Ocean podcast. It was great to have you
on. It was great to speak to someone who
has pivoted so many times in their life
(01:49:27):
to say, hey, you know what? I want to
have an effect on the planet. I want to
make sure that I do something good. And
that's to start a business that not only
has great values, but makes a great
product that people can enjoy. And they
know it's healthy for them. And you don't
market based on that. You market based on
the tastiness and how it fits into their
lives and why they should have it. But I
really think this is something that we
(01:49:48):
need to support more of.
We need to support businesses have these
values no matter what they're selling it
on or how they're marketing their item.
But they have these values regardless
because they want to do something that's
good for the planet because they we need
to do something that's good for the
planet. We need to talk about
regenerative agriculture. This is
something that's extremely important to
not only the company, but also to our
planet and how it can conserve water, how
(01:50:10):
it can make sure that it's something that
is a big thing. It's a big deal. It's
good for the soil, which is good for the
ocean. Eventually, it's good for the planet.
Which is good for you. And I think that
is a great sales pitch in my opinion.
That's how it sells to me. But also it's
great tasting bread and something I wish
I can get access to on a more frequent
basis. But I live here in Canada. And
(01:50:32):
unfortunately, it's not available right
now. Hopefully in the future. But if
you're in the US and you want to get
access to it, I'll put the link in the
show notes. You can find out where it's
being sold. And I think it's Whole Foods.
This is what she said. But so check out
your local Whole
Foods. But this is so great.
It's so great to be able to speak to
someone like Maddie who's got an
oceanography background, understands the
role of the ocean that plays in the
(01:50:53):
regulation of our planet, but also looks
at different aspects of life. Looking at
regenerative agriculture as a way to
protect the planet and to conserve the
planet is something
that's really interesting.
And I just love the fact that she's out
here doing this building a business
that's greater husband who's you know,
multi entrepreneur does a lot of
different things led them to this
(01:51:14):
business here and something that's very
successful. And so that's great with
great values for the planet. So thank you
again, Maddie, for joining us on today's
episode. We're gonna put the links to the
all the things that that will lead her
and connect you with her and the business
of patcha and also buy the product if you can. If you're in the US.
Buy the product. But if you're not just
listen to the story. We don't also we
(01:51:37):
don't need as many scientists in marine
biology or even just conservationists.
Well, of course we need them but not as
many as we need in businesses that will
create great things that have great
values for the planet and for healthy
systems in general. And that's what we
need. So this is a great inspiration for
that. So thank you again to Maddie and
thank you for listening to this episode
(01:51:58):
of the how to protect the ocean podcast.
If you have any questions or comments, please do let us know. And I'll see you next time.
Welcome back to the podcast. We have a
special episode for you
today because this is an ongoing
thing that I've been trying to do for the
podcast. I talk a lot about oceans and
protecting the ocean.
And this is why you're here. You're here
because of how to protect the ocean.
That's the name of this
podcast. Well, we protect the ocean by
supporting businesses who
have values that are there for
that are good for the ocean. And today we
(01:00:21):
are showcasing one of
those businesses that talk
about these values that have these values
to not only just make people
happy, but also just because
this is what's important to them. You
know, protecting the
environment, making something
healthy, taking away chemicals from food.
And today we're going
to be talking to Maddie
Hemman, who's actually a former
(01:00:42):
oceanographer, well educated
oceanographer who is here to talk
about the business that she co-founded
with her husband called
Pacha, which is a buckwheat bread,
a loaf of bread that you can buy in the
US and you can enjoy. It's tasty. It's
healthy. It's made
with not only love, but
actually healthy things that are good for
(01:01:03):
your body, less chemicals or no chemicals
and just something that's really good.
She tells us how she makes the bread, how
they make the bread, how the company came
to be, how she went from oceanography to
supporting an organization or starting a
company, co-founding a company that has
to do with selling bread. We're going to
talk all about that on today's episode of
the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.
Let's start the show.
(01:01:28):
Hey everybody, welcome back to another
exciting episode of the How to Protect
the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew
Lewin. And this is the podcast where you
find out what's happening with the ocean,
how you could speak up for the ocean and
what you can do to live for a better
ocean by taking action.
Now, today's episode, we're going to be
talking with Maddie Hemman, who is an
oceanographer and an engineer and someone
who's quite intelligent and says, you
(01:01:48):
know what, I want to make
a difference in the world.
So I am going to co-found a company that
sells buckwheat bread. Now, did I expect
that to happen when I first heard about
Patche, the company that she
co-founded with her husband?
No, I didn't expect to hear that one bit.
But as I got to know more and more about
the story, I started to think to myself,
I said, hey, you know what, this is
something that I think the
(01:02:09):
audience would really appreciate.
You know, somebody who changed their path
multiple times because they wanted to
have an effect on the planet. They wanted
to do something that's good, not only for
the planet, for the people who live on
this planet. And she does that for her
customers. She does that for the
company's customers. And they have values
that are good. And do they market based
on, hey, we do some good things. We have
(01:02:29):
really good values for the environment,
for the planet and for you? No. They say,
this is great bread. You're going to want
to eat it because it's tasty. And it's a
little good for you too, but it's really
tasty. You're going to want it. And
that's how they market it.
I thought it was a really good episode
that I think everybody should listen to.
So enjoy this interview with Maddie
Harmon, former oceanographer now
co-founder of Patra bread enjoy and I
will talk to you after.
(01:02:50):
Hey, Maddie, welcome to the how to
protect the ocean podcast. Are you ready
to talk about Patra and regenerative
agriculture all in the context of
protecting the
environment and growing a business?
Let's do this. All right. I'm excited for
this because as I mentioned, like this is
a fun podcast. The stuff I've been
wanting to do for a long time, I'm having
businesses on that are good for the
(01:03:10):
environment that allow us to make better
decisions for the ocean and for the
environment in general, reducing climate
change and so forth. And people can make
a buck. And it just goes to show that you
can you can grow your revenue and you can
protect the ocean and the planet at the
same time. So I'm really happy that
you're here to share your journey.
It's an interesting one because you do
(01:03:31):
have a background in oceanography. So
we're going to talk about that. But let's
get to know you a little bit and then
we'll get to know Patra a little bit. So
why don't you just let us know, Maddie,
who you are and what you do.
Yeah, so yeah, my name is Maddie Hamon
and I am the co-founder and director of
marketing for Patra. We make a an organic
gluten free sprouted buckwheat bread and
(01:03:53):
it is delicious and nutritious.
And at the same time, it is supporting
regenerative
agriculture and saving the planet.
That's awesome. That's awesome. Now you
got your start in oceanography like you
got that's that's what you went to school
for. How did all that happen? Did you
want to be an oceanographer when you were
(01:04:14):
a kid? Can you take us
through that process?
Yeah. So no, I wasn't the kid that always
like always dreamed of being a marine
biologist. I, you know, I, I was a I was
a super nerd in school was like always
the A plus student really good at math.
(01:04:35):
And my journey kind of was like, well, I
should just do the hardest thing because
it's always you can always switch out of
the hardest thing if harder, you don't
like it or whatever.
And yeah, so I went to school for civil
engineering for my bachelor's degree. And
sometime along the way, I realized like,
(01:04:56):
I don't really want to design highway
overpasses for the rest of my life. That
led me to fluid mechanics.
And my one of my mentors in college, I
took some of his graduate
level classes on turbulence and
he kind of introduced me to the idea of
oceanography. Okay. And, you know, from
(01:05:19):
the from the perspective of a civil
engineer, oceanography is studied like,
okay, well, how can we protect our
coastal infrastructure? How can we
understand how storms are
going to impact humans, etc.
Yeah, very much like the Army Corps of
Engineers, essentially.
Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And but
through that, I discovered like, oh,
(01:05:40):
well, there's people who are just purely
studying the science of the ocean and the
physics of the ocean. And so that is then
I found myself interested in that and
pursuing a graduate degree in physical
oceanography after college.
And again, it was in some ways, it was
(01:06:01):
like, this seems like a really good way
for me to use the very particular like
math and science skills that I gained to
help humanity. I was motivated by the I
mean, I came from the Midwest and my
understanding of what was happening with
the planet was like,
(01:06:21):
okay, the climate is changing.
And I was like, we must not know enough
about it. Otherwise, like, things would
be different. And so I thought going into
grad school that understanding more about
the climate and and how the ocean impacts
the whole ocean climate system would be
(01:06:43):
the best way for me to help with the
issue of climate change.
And I think, I mean, as I was incredibly
interesting and an amazing experience I
learned so much. And the more I learned,
the more I realized,
like, wow, we know a lot.
(01:07:05):
And I think that really knowing what was
happening was not the thing that was
going to start changing our behavior as a
species on this planet. And there's some
time in my third or fourth year, I
realized that I probably would not pursue
(01:07:25):
pure research as my as my life, I thought
I would maybe get into science
and education or, you know, some
something in that vein. Yeah. And then it
was in the last two years of my time as
an oceanographer that I met my partner,
Adam. He's my husband, he's my co
(01:07:45):
founder. And he introduced me to the
concept of regenerative agriculture.
And he has been he's a serial
entrepreneur. Okay. And he has founded
businesses, catering restaurants, and
(01:08:06):
then most recently, a business called
Boochcraft that makes a hard kombucha.
And he was in a, when at the time we met,
he was in the space of
(01:08:36):
there was modern
of his roles at those companies and found
himself in a place like, "Well, I'm ready
for the next thing." And that happened to
be this bread, what we
(01:08:58):
now call Pacha bread.
And yeah, he kind of got the ball rolling
and pretty soon in the
early days, I realized
that I wanted to be involved because I
saw the opportunity to
really use business to
(01:09:19):
shift the paradigm that the food system
is currently in, in a way
that actually sequesters
carbon and actually makes a big
difference for many
ways for the environment.
Yeah, it's really interesting. You had
quite the journey going
from engineering to, okay,
I know a lot about this, you know,
(01:09:40):
getting into grad school,
I want to learn more about
climate change and some of the things
that we are, you know,
what do we know and how
can I help, you know, contribute to that
knowledge? And you're
like, "Well, hold on
a second. We know way too much about
this, but we're not
changing." Like, which is so
true. Like we do know a lot. We're still
discovering things, but we do know a lot.
It seems like every time we discovered it
becomes more and more
grim and doom and gloom,
(01:10:02):
and then we're look around and people
aren't changing. Now you
happen to meet your now
husband who is also a serial
entrepreneur, but also for
like, seems like good for the
planet type of businesses. And then you
get into this. So you
basically went from, "I'm
going to do something and do something
(01:10:24):
really impactful and
hard to I'm going to change
the way we look at things so that we can
help this climate change thing. We know a
lot about climate change. Now we need to
act. So I'm going to
help in that action." That's
quite the jump from like doing research
to business and did
that. Did you find that a
(01:10:45):
difficult, like that to
be a difficult transition?
I mean, yes and no. I studied
observational oceanography.
So my group, my advisor and
my group, we would go out to sea and we
would, you know, we'd
write grants, we would build
instrumentation, we would take a whole
crew of engineers and
(01:11:05):
students out to sea to gather
data and then we would come back and
analyze the data. And so
really like two thirds of
my thesis, I spent more on the side of
like writing grants and
administrating my own.
I collected my own data and wrote my own
(01:11:26):
grant and everything. So a
lot of that was like managing
teams. Yeah. And so those skills
transferred pretty readily.
And then, you know, there's
this whole section of my brain that's
just like, knows a bunch
of differential equations
that I don't really need to know anymore.
I don't know how you make the bread, but
(01:11:47):
if you need to use
differential equations,
maybe you'll be that'll that'll help. But
for now, probably not.
But even going to like
you had that interest in maybe science
communication and going into
a marketing position or taking
a marketing position within this company
really is saying, hey,
look, like you look at science
communication in a way of like changing
behaviors around through the
communication. And now
(01:12:08):
you're like, okay, I want this behavior
change to really go
towards I want you to buy the
bread. And so how do I convince you to
buy this bread? And now there's always a
divergent way of doing things for me from
a scientific and from a nature
based perspective, I'm just like, get
this bread because it's it's probably
good for you, but it's also better for
the environment. So I'm
(01:12:28):
going to make a decision because it's
better for the environment. But a lot of
people who own these
businesses are like, I want
like people don't always buy that way.
I'm not the right I'm probably out of the
norm from from your regular
customer base. And you can
correct me if I'm wrong. But how was that
to going from convincing? Is it going
from convincing like, oh, look, this is
good for nature or to just be like, you
want to buy this product because it's
(01:12:49):
good for you. It tastes good. You know,
it's a different way of looking up bread.
Like, how do how is that transition going
from a very like, you know,
oceanographic, very to the point type of
of writing style and communication style
to, hey, this is this is some fun bread
for you to eat. And it's good for you.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd say it's a
(01:13:10):
different kind of to the point. But
you're you're totally spot on. And what
it's one of the things that has been,
it's been a learning piece for me. And as
you know, as somebody coming from a
science background and into the world of
marketing, it's like, you, you're doing
this dance where you're, you're you are
in a way, communicating, like trying to
(01:13:33):
get a message across.
But you have to be meeting people where
they're at. And frankly, most people
don't don't care about the sustainability
piece like, yeah, they could say that
they care. But when push comes to shove,
it's like the bread's gotta the bread has
to be meeting a need of there's a lot of
(01:13:56):
people, a lot of people's
needs are in the cost arena.
And our bread is not the cheapest bread
on the on the shelf. So the thing that we
have to really lead with is like, hey,
this bread, it's, it's better for you.
That is much more motivating for people
than this bread is better for the planet
(01:14:18):
that you live on. It's like, it's too
abstract a concept for people to say, I'm
going to spend $2 more on a loaf of bread
because it's gonna sequester some carbon
or something. No, people
it's more of an afterthought, right?
Like, so say I'm sharing the bread with
somebody and like, oh, this is really
good. I'm like, yeah, it's really healthy
for you. It's got all this. It's got this
amount of protein, this, you know,
(01:14:39):
reduced carbs and stuff like that. Then I
can say, oh, by the way, it's also good
for the environment. And they're like,
oh, that's cool. But this really tastes
good. You know, like, that's probably
it's more of like the after like the
secondary thought afterwards and be like,
oh, yeah, by the way, they do this new
agricultural thing. And if you're
interested in agriculture, then maybe you
go on with that conversation. Is that is
that pretty much on point?
Yeah, that's on point. And it's, and it's
(01:15:00):
like, it's on point. And I'll just put
some language to it. It's, it's a
customer retention tactic more than
anything else. So someone starts buying
our bread. And we don't like we don't
lead our advertisement, our hook isn't
like, bread, that's safe, you know,
that's not the hook. The hook is this
(01:15:21):
bread is tasty. It's allergen free. It's,
you know, like got good, complete,
plant based protein, etc. And then, you
know, they start getting our emails. And
emails, we start talking about like, Hey,
did you know that this bread was grown
with regenerative buckwheat? Or Hey, did
you know that our, our packaging is fully
compostable, like home
(01:15:43):
compostable. And then
it's where the values of the company make
a difference. Yeah, yeah. And people
start realizing like, Oh, this bread,
this company is really cool. I want to
keep buying from this company. I'm going
to convince my kids to eat this bread.
Yeah, even if it, you know, like, even if
it's not the first thing that their kids
are like, yeah, you know, yeah, it's a
(01:16:04):
state. I mean, let's be honest, like
bread is a staple in a lot of households,
right, especially in North America, bread
is a staple. And so, you know, I grew up
toasted in the morning,
or I'll have a sandwich or, you know, so
it's part of that, that process. But
lately, it seems as though over the past
maybe decade, bread has become a bit of
like regular bread, your typical bread
(01:16:26):
that you buy in a grocery store. People
have had gluten allergies, you know,
people like, well, it has a lot of
complex carbs. So it's not like, or hard
to break down in the body, you know, it's
going to create like, it's not going to
be healthy for you. If you want to lose
weight, or you want to be in shape, you
lose your bread, you feel better, all
this kind of stuff. And this way, I'm
looking at your weight, you know, I'm going to be like,
you know, on my website, it's like, for
people who've given up on bread, it's
(01:16:47):
such a great message. Because so many
people have been like, you know, screw
that, I'm just gonna avoid bread
altogether. But people love bread. I love
bread. I have like, thoughts of my dad
when I was younger, like on a Sunday, and
eating like T biz and, you know, in front
of the TV with butter and stuff. And but
like, now I don't do it, because I'm
like, Well, this bread's not good for me,
the ones that I buy at the grocery store.
How do I get good bread? So I think I
(01:17:08):
love this messaging. Because it's really
just being like, this is a new way of
thinking of bread where you can have it.
You know, it's almost like have your cake in your bread. And I don't think I can have it.
you to have your bread and eat it too,
where you don't have to
feel sorry for yourself
after you drink, after you eat it, right?
So I think that's a
really interesting messaging
to get to. I love
that. I like that aspect.
I might steal that, have your bread.
Yeah, there you go. Right?
(01:17:30):
I'm not bad. I'm going to get for a
little bit of marketing.
But let's talk about the
bread. Like why is it, like you mentioned
it a little bit before
about regenerative agriculture,
like how is this bread so different than
the bread that we would
like sort of the quote
unquote typical bread that we
would see in a grocery store?
(01:17:51):
Yeah. Okay, so there's two there's two
like important parts of
this. One is the actual
bread itself and why it's different
nutritionally ingredients
wise. So our bread is we make
the bread from whole groats of growth
seeds, buckwheat seeds.
Yeah. Buckwheat is not wheat.
(01:18:15):
It's completely gluten free. It actually
the plant is it doesn't
it's not like a grass.
It's not a grain. It's like this little
flat. It's like these
little white flowers that
have like a very green leafy plant and
it's a cover crop. So
it's completely different
than wheat. It's a totally different
thing. High in protein.
(01:18:38):
It's one of the only complete
plant based proteins. You know, you got
like your quinoa, your
pumpkin seeds, your hemp.
And buckwheat is one of the only it's
like nine or 10 plant
based protein sources that
are complete. And so and then we, we
(01:19:00):
actually don't use flour
to make our bread. We soak
the whole seeds. So that that process
actually starts removing
what are called anti nutrients
that bind to the nutrients that are in
the bread. Normally
those things would just cause
you to pass some of the nutrients that
(01:19:21):
are available from
waste. Yeah. Yeah. And then
we, we blend it, we ferment it and the
fermentation process, we use a wild
fermentation. We don't
add any yeast, but the, the yeast that
are on the buckwheat
groats ferment the bread.
It begins, it kicks off the digestion
process. So it's like
almost like it's predigested.
(01:19:42):
So the bread is really easy to digest.
It's full of nutrients.
Buckwheat's really high
in magnesium, which is nutrient that most
people are missing. And it's like anybody
can eat this bread unless they're
allergic to buckwheat,
which is like 0.0001% of the
North American population. Okay. So it
(01:20:03):
really is like it's, and
it just feels amazing. Yeah.
It feels really good in the body and I
eat it every day, like
multiple times a day. And
you don't get like that. You know, I have
some people they have
like, I've had bread
before, like I said, I love bread and I
feel groggy after I feel
kind of like, you know,
sluggish after and you're just like, why
(01:20:24):
did I have so much bread and that kind of
stuff? Almost to the point where like, I
don't want, if I have
a hamburger, a lot of
times I just have the patty. I don't have
the bread that goes
with it because I don't
want to feel crappy after. So this you're
saying you actually
don't feel that you just
feel, you feel maybe energized or
something like that. You
just feel good. Like you can
just go on with the rest of your day
without being affected.
Yeah. It just feels good.
(01:20:44):
And like, you can eat a couple of slices
of Pacha bread and you'll
be full for the morning,
you know, like, yeah, that's great. Quick
sugary head. You get
level of boost and crash.
Yeah. Okay. That's awesome. So yeah. And
now like that's,
that's the first part of it.
And then there's another part, which I
(01:21:05):
assume is how it's, it's
grown and, and things. Yes.
Yeah. And so then the second piece about
the bread is, and this is
the piece we don't always
talk about first thing, but all of our
buckwheat is grown by certified
regenerative farmers.
And for, for your listeners who aren't
familiar with regenerative agriculture,
(01:21:27):
the basic idea is that regenerative
farmers are taking care of
their soil. So by taking care of
the soil, they're doing a few things.
They are, they are, well, they're
turning, they're turning
carbon from the atmosphere into soil
carbon. They're making a really healthy,
(01:21:50):
robust soil ecosystem
so that, you know, you can imagine like,
when you, when you have
like a new bag of potting soil,
right? And you, you can just see that
it's like, it's all fluffy and airy and
healthy and you pour
some water on it and it soaks it up like
a sponge versus like compacted dirt from
(01:22:13):
your kids playground or
whatever. Yeah. It creates this, this
ecosystem, this network that
has air and it, and it allows
life to move through it. And the life is
what's storing the carbon,
all of the little critters
that are carbon-based life forms. And
then, like I, like I
mentioned, that soil is able to retain
(01:22:34):
water. So regenerative farm. Much better
than what you would
normally, like regular farming and
regular soil, right? Yeah, exactly. So
like, yeah, if you'd imagine on a, on a,
on a conventional farm,
you've got compacted soil that you are,
you're, you know, you're tilling the
field, you're adding
in your, your synthetic fertilizers to be
(01:22:57):
able to grow something
there because there's, you know,
the soil is lifeless. Right. And then
when it rains, a bunch of
that dirt is being washed off
the field. So we have major flooding
issues across the country.
I mean, in California, I'm
especially aware of it, but what, what
you'll see in areas where there are
(01:23:17):
regenerative farms is like
the, the conventional farms, if there's a
big rain event, they've just got like
ditches full of like
red, you know, muddy water. And then you
go onto the, onto the
regenerative farm. And there's not
even really a flooding issue at all,
because the soil is taking up the water.
(01:23:39):
This is so crazy too,
because like you think if you, if you
look at how water moves nowadays,
especially when we get these
bigger rainfalls due to climate change
and more sort of extreme weather
patterns, even just regular
weather patterns, you start to see water
move differently. And people are
wondering what is going on? Is it the way
you know, we're routing water, you know,
that which is, which is part of it, but
(01:23:59):
we never really talk about how
soil changes over time, especially when
we're farming everything, we go into like
monoculture type of agriculture,
we're going to like soil impacted, and we
don't talk about how
important it is for soil to be in,
in quote unquote healthy shape. And you
(01:24:20):
know, this is regenerative farming
practice, which is what we used to do
back in the day when we needed the soil
to be to be good. We got out of that for
some reason, and because maybe it was a
quicker return, I'm not sure. And now
we're, we're starting to see some some
companies go back to it. It's just insane
to me to really think about and we don't
(01:24:42):
document that we don't talk about it as
much as we should, to say, hey, we're going to do this.
And if we're going to do this as much as
we should, to say, hey, you know what, if
we take care of our soil, like farmers
take care of our soil, they're allowed to
take care of the soil, we will get a much
better system, like just environmentally,
not only from a climate change
perspective, but just from a safety and
water movement perspective. Totally.
(01:25:03):
Yeah. And like, I mean, since we're on
the water, there's more about
regenerative agriculture, but when on the
water perspective, you know, like, in the
oceans, there are there are huge issues.
Yeah. Dead zones just from
the nutrient runoff. Oh my gosh.
I mean, huge issues, the Gulf of Mexico
is like, yeah, I used to work in there.
(01:25:24):
Yeah, it's not really. Yeah. But, you
know, so the one regenerative agriculture
is removing the need for
those synthetic inputs.
Yeah, you know, like, or at least
significantly reducing it so that you
don't have this issue where people are
just dumping nitrogen onto the onto the
(01:25:45):
soil. And then the rain is washing it off
down to the waterways.
But there's also, you know, there's a lot
of there's a lot of issues on our reefs
and in our in our coastal zones, just
from sediment itself, like, yes, I didn't
run off affecting the quality, the water
quality, the, you know, the marine life
(01:26:06):
that's in the coastal zones, sometimes is
damaged or killed by
overloaded sediment from the water.
Yeah, I think about just the impact of
the Mississippi, how far it reaches into
the Gulf of Mexico, that current that
comes out of the Mississippi. I mean,
oftentimes the impacts of hypoxia from
the just from the nutrient pollution and
(01:26:29):
the phytoplankton
growing and won't get into it.
But you can go all the way to Texas, like
it's huge. And just the sediment carries,
you know, pretty far out there in the
middle of the Gulf of Mexico or in the
middle of like the part the northern part
of the Gulf of Mexico.
And it's just it's insane to to think
about we don't talk about it a lot. But
it's insane to even think about how that
(01:26:50):
soil that's going there could be already
impacted from fertilizers from chemicals
that are used all the way up
and down the Mississippi River.
You know, that's obviously the major
river in the US, but other rivers are
pretty much impacted very similar. Just
not maybe not to that, that size because
it's just such a big, such a big river
(01:27:11):
and travel so far up up the Midwest.
For sure.
Yeah. Yeah. And so like, like I said,
there's other, we
mentioned the, the chemicals.
And so like, oh, swimming
in the Ohio River. Oh, yeah.
But yeah, the you know, the other the
(01:27:32):
other major thing that is a boon for the
environment and a boon for people's
health is that regenerative agriculture
is essentially like farming in a way that
the ecosystem is in balance.
So we have an issue with pests.
You know, like, an example, slugs on an
(01:27:53):
on an orchard. Cool. Well, we just let
our ducks in and the ducks. Yeah, slugs.
Like, we try not to separate the systems.
Right. Right. The systems are intertwined
and the animals are a part of the of the
cult. That's just one piece of
regenerative agriculture.
And then, you know, on a on a greater
(01:28:13):
level, just having more diversity in the
plant life. So rather than having acres,
hectares of of one plant when like, you
know, sometimes one genetically modified
plant that has a lot
of the same genetics.
If a pest comes in or if a disease blight
(01:28:35):
comes, it's going to knock everything
out. Yeah. So that's why they have to use
the fungicides, the herbicides, all this,
you know, on those plants to protect them
and in regenerative agriculture, the idea
is, well, if there's more diversity and
if if the fields are smaller and more
spread out, then those kinds of diseases,
(01:28:57):
they just can't travel because there's other, there should be more.
There's just more genetic diversity. And
a lot of times, too, like because of the
biodiversity present a lot of the night,
I don't know an example off by heart, but
a lot of the times any invasive species
or any species that comes in that could
harm a specific culture.
(01:29:18):
In this case, the buckwheat might be
deterred by other animals present or
other plants that are present that would
ward off these types of invasive or, you
know, animal life or disease that could
be that could alter, you know, the growth
and the health of the buckwheat or
whatever your culturing.
(01:29:39):
Now, so this is interesting because he
said something that really kind of made
me interested because I've been thinking
about business and how everybody wants to
grow their business and grow and grow and
grow. And it's got to be big. It's got to
scale. It's all this.
When you have smaller, I guess, landmass
or keeping it the the the I guess the
growth of the buckwheat smaller because
(01:29:59):
you have all this biodiversity, can you
have a business that's sustainable, that
can still bring in revenue without, you
know, because you're having a smaller
area, maybe without impacting, you know,
your bottom line or just sort of your
lifestyle that you prefer?
Like, is it a change in it's a change in
mindset? Maybe you're not growing all the
(01:30:20):
time? Or is that in my wrong? Is it a
change in mindset when you have a company
that uses regenerative agriculture
compared to the others?
I assume that's the benefit for the
others. You can scale really, really big
and grow as much as possible. But there's
a cost to that in terms of the
environment here. You're keeping it
small, but keeping the environment intact
(01:30:40):
plus probably less
upkeep and less chemicals.
Yeah, I mean, that that's an that's an
interesting question. And I mean, there's
certainly there's certainly issues where
it's like, okay, regenerative
agriculture, great solution for climate
change, but it's not like we can flip a
switch and turn all of our fields onto
(01:31:03):
regenerative agriculture right away.
But you know, from like from our from the
perspective of our farmers, a lot of them
are already growing, you know, they have
their fields are their fields are
separated and they have they have certain
things happening on
different parts of their property.
(01:31:25):
Gotcha. So we just one aspect of their
farm. Yeah, exactly. And there's a lot of
like crop rotation is a part of it too.
So you can actually have quite a large.
Yeah. Like, you can you can have a large
farm that that farm is buckwheat. But the
(01:31:45):
it may just be that year to year they
rotate. Yeah, where that is being grown.
And yeah, that alone.
And that helps with the the nutrient
profile of the soil and right and the and
the bio ecosystem, the this and even from
a farmer's perspective, do they like it
(01:32:06):
more like regenerative agriculture than
sort of the what has become the
conventional agriculture?
Yeah, I'm just gonna say yes. And but
they may not know it yet.
Okay, so benefits for the farmers, you
know, for sure, they you know, they're
(01:32:28):
they there's so many issues with farmers
and people in rural areas with that where
they spray a lot of life say a lot of
incidents of leukemia cancers, all many,
many, many health issues that arise from
being exposed to those chemicals.
And we've seen like the movies about
Monsanto and like, you know, taking over
specific areas and taking over farmers
(01:32:50):
and seed, you know, genetic, genetically
modified seeds and stuff like that.
There's a lot of bad for business as well
as bad for health,
like human health, too.
Exactly. So there's the health side. And
then, yeah, that also, so what, what has
happened in our farming system, you know,
kind of going back to when we shifted
away from regenerative agriculture, we
(01:33:12):
created these, these synthetic
fertilizers, and most of them actually,
you know, a lot of them were created kind
of in the post World War Two era, where
the chemical manufacturers were needing
to figure out what to
do with their plants.
Yeah, plants and they're going to produce
so. So chemical fertilizers and, you
(01:33:35):
know, and it really like it was a miracle
thing you could you could improve your
crop yields by 5x by
inputting this this chemical.
And then it was kind of this like this
loop because every year you need to put a
little bit more to get the same return on
your on your field because you're not
(01:33:56):
taking you know you you're not taking
care of the soil, you're
relying on these chemicals.
And so what's happened is a lot of the
farmers find themselves in a cycle where
they need they need the the synthetics in
order to make the way they farm work and
a lot of them you know they learned how
to farm from their dad, they've been
doing it this way for 30 years.
(01:34:19):
And so it's hard to change your ways and
it's hard to learn something new. And so
it's not it's not always an easy sell to
be like you really should be growing your
food regeneratively.
Like just because they're like, well,
I've always done it this way I don't want
to change. But the farmers who do shift.
They want regenerative regenerative be
(01:34:40):
grown food can often bring
in a premium price for them.
They can make more money on their crop,
but they also can reduce their their
inputs, like they don't have to spend
money on the fertilizers and the
pesticides and the herbicides.
So it's just a win all around really.
(01:35:03):
Yeah. And plus they're not exposing
themselves to these chemicals too.
There's a danger in working with these
chemicals. You have to be careful you
have to wear certain types of gear and so
forth to be an accident happen.
Like we obviously they try and reduce
them, but accidents happen. Yeah, there's
a really there's a really excellent
documentary called Kiss the Ground, which
gives a really good perspective on some
(01:35:24):
of the regenerative farmers takes on
this. And yeah, it's it's powerful.
It's powerful. I mean, and it takes I
think it takes these types of
documentaries to educate people like
potential consumers are just people in
the US and Canada and elsewhere where
regenerative practices are trying to be
put back in place, but are not. And we're
(01:35:44):
looking at what our system has become.
You know, you in marketing, you're trying
to tell people about the benefits of of
this bread and and like made from
buckwheat and and how it good like I'm
looking on the website, you get some
pretty great reviews here for people. Did
it is does it take a lot to get people to
try it to try your bread?
(01:36:10):
Um, like is it like a I guess I get you
know, from a digital perspective when
you're marketing and there's emails going
out or you have an ad on YouTube or you
have an ad on or wherever you place your
ads or wherever you are present in terms
of organically trying to educate people.
Does it take like a certain amount of
times before someone's like, no, you know
what, I'll try it or is it more of like
(01:36:31):
word of mouth is really helping spread as
people are trying to try this.
I mean, it's a little bit of it's a
little bit of both. So Pacha bread and
like I mentioned, it's not the cheapest
thing on the on the shelf. So we don't
have the benefit of like, Oh, well, this
is the cheapest one. So I'm
just going to grab that. True.
But in terms of like, in
terms of conversion rates
(01:36:53):
and costs per
acquisition, like, we're not in like,
it's not like we have to pay way more
than the next company, you know?
We're on par with what we
would expect in that zone.
So it's not necessarily, it's not hard
to give people to try it.
(01:37:14):
It's not harder than we
would expect it to be.
Yeah.
(laughs)
Yeah, and it really depends.
Like, you know, some customers,
like it's just the thing
they've been looking for,
especially for people who are allergen,
like really allergen free, like celiac,
and like, yeah, just
can't eat any of the--
(01:37:35):
Yeah, makes it an easier decision.
Yeah, a lot of the gluten-free breads
have like psyllium husk and guar gum
and different kinds of binders
that are not actually
like super digestible.
So a lot of people who have inflammation
and like irritable
bowel syndrome, et cetera,
they can't even really
eat the gluten-free options
that exist, so it's a hard thing.
(01:37:56):
I know you're gonna
be polite and say this,
but a lot of people that I
know have gluten allergies
eat gluten-free bread
and they say it sucks.
(laughs) Yeah. It's just a taste.
It's from general, like,
not only like the irritation
and stuff like that from it,
but also they just say
it doesn't taste good.
You know, they don't like the taste,
they don't feel good after,
just like you
mentioned before, like this.
It's a tough ask, especially, you know,
when you have to make that change, right?
(01:38:18):
And you're trying to find something new.
Yeah, and you know, pacha bread is,
it's not trying to be white bread.
I think it's the other thing. Right.
It's just like, in some ways,
there's a lifestyle shift that happens
when you start eating pacha bread
because you're not consuming it.
Like, I don't make
sandwiches with my pacha bread.
(01:38:39):
I make like open-faced sandwiches
or I kind of use them as like English,
we have English muffins
and I like to make like
egg sandwiches on that.
Oh yeah. But it's, yeah,
it's just like a slightly different,
it's almost its own category of food.
So when you really
getting people into pacha bread,
like once people are in, they're like,
I'm never going back, but.
(01:39:00):
I see that, I see that
review on there, yeah.
Yeah, totally.
However, we are, we
just released tortillas.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, and they're incredible.
They are made with the
same base as our bread.
So it's still, it's like two ingredients.
It's just buckwheat and salt.
And yeah.
(01:39:22):
No chemicals, nothing else
added, like none of that.
Nothing.
They're, and so they're
super clean, allergen front,
allergen free, gluten free.
And they, yeah, they're
like, they perform somewhere
between a corn
tortilla and a wheat tortilla,
obviously like the
gluten in a wheat tortilla,
just like you can do, you can fold it,
(01:39:43):
you can stretch it, whatever.
That's really hard to
achieve with gluten free.
For sure, yeah.
Yeah, but our tortillas, they're like,
we actually have quite a
few people at our facility
who are from Mexico
who do the production.
They're like, this
is, this right here now,
this is a good tortilla,
(01:40:03):
like this feels authentic.
That's a good thing to
have when you have like people
who have tortillas on
a fairly regular basis,
being like, yeah, this is what we want,
like this is the
stuff, yeah, that's awesome.
So like when it comes
to the company here,
and just, obviously the values are high
(01:40:24):
in terms of clean eating,
less chemicals, no chemicals,
buckwheat, going a
different way of farming,
regenerative farming, it's
a big part of your values
as a company.
And like, as you mentioned,
it's not necessarily
what you're marketing on
because you want
people to taste the bread,
you want people to go with what has it.
(01:40:44):
Like how big of a part is
the value part of your company
to you as well as the staff?
I believe there's, there's what about,
is how many people
work for you right now?
We've got like 25.
25, okay.
So like, you know, small
to medium sized company,
but like how important
(01:41:05):
is that to the staff,
to you, to your husband,
like a co-founder Adam,
like how big was creating
those, that value system,
not just for the product, but
just for yourselves as well,
you being an oceanographer,
understanding climate change,
understanding what it can do,
understanding that the powerful impact of
regenerative agriculture.
When we talk a lot about ESGs and all
(01:41:27):
these types of things,
when we talk about values for companies,
how big was that for all of
you to create those values?
I mean, I'll just say that the company
wouldn't exist without the values.
True, true.
Like, you know, Adam and
specifically our founding team,
(01:41:49):
the people who like birthed it,
we were clear that this was why we were
making this company.
Yeah.
Like,
it wasn't like, it wasn't like, let's
make as much money as possible and that
will screw the rest.
It's let's make a great product for
people like that is healthy for people.
(01:42:09):
That's, that's good for the environment.
And let's make some money while we do it.
It's still a company, still for profit
company, but we want to have,
it has to be this, it has to have
regenerative agriculture, less,
like no chemicals, be good for people, be
healthy, be healthy for the environment.
That was the big thing, right?
Yeah. And I mean, and I also think that
(01:42:30):
there, there's a genuine trust.
I'm going to believe, isn't quite the
word, it's genuine trust that this is
where business has to go.
Yeah.
Like we, we, we have to start doing this
and Pacha is on the leading
(01:42:51):
edge of a movement that is,
that is building and unfolding and yeah,
if we're going to have food
farmed from our farmlands,
we have to start shifting, you know,
there's like an estimate that there are
60 harvests left from most of like 95%
(01:43:12):
of the farmable land in our country.
60 harvest is like 30 years if we keep
going the way we're
going. That's terrifying.
That is terrifying.
That is very terrifying.
But when you install things like
regenerative agriculture, now you're
looking at extending that like,
Indefinitely. If you truly are caring for
(01:43:34):
the ecosystem and nurturing, like just,
if the main thing you're caring for is
the soil, the soil is
going to care for you.
Yeah. Now, here's a question that you may
or may not be able to answer because
like, obviously
here's the problem is like,
you know, we have a problem where we have
60 harvest left, about 30 years left of
agriculture and within the United States.
I'm sure it's very similar to Canada.
(01:43:57):
Regenerative agriculture really will help
to make it indefinite.
How do we make that shift on a larger
scale, not just company after company,
but just being like,
we need to make this.
Is that a policy decision that needs to
take place to really move the needle or
is it more of just education
for business owners or both?
Yeah, I mean, to move at the pace that I
(01:44:20):
think we need to move at, it's, you know,
attack on all fronts.
I do think that policy is going to be key
in making the shift. What exactly, what
kind of policy that needs to be,
it's hard to say, you know, like one of
the issues with regenerative agriculture
(01:44:41):
is that it's actually not well defined.
Mm hmm. Gotcha. So kind of like, you
know, you got your organic certification
and one of the issues with the organic
certification was like,
we had to define it really well in order
to make it a USDA certification. And in
doing so, we actually, like, some of the
(01:45:07):
heart of what it was got lost and like,
you know, you had to have hydroponically
grown organic, organic certified produce,
which is like, well, it's not really what
we were trying to do with organic
certification, but technically they are
meeting all the standards.
But, you know, in terms of making policy,
(01:45:30):
like, yeah, I think one of the most, for
me, at least one of the most interesting
ideas is just implementing a carbon tax.
I think would be is potentially one of
the most effective ways, but then
assessing how, how, you know, like if
(01:45:53):
there were carbon tax and you were just,
well, okay, there's two pieces.
If there was a carbon tax and the and the
you also most we didn't say this, but
most of the pesticides herbicides and the
synthetic fertilizers, those are all
petrochemicals.
They're all from petroleum.
(01:46:15):
Right, right. So you're
reducing that right away. Yeah.
You know, you're going to have to tax
that. Yeah, yeah. And get rid of the
subsidies that currently exist for the
wheat, soy and corn that are growing in
this country. We have, you know, we have
the government is paying farmers to over
produce crops from these conventional
(01:46:36):
systems that that would not that would
not be viable in the
marketplace without the subsidies.
Right. People wouldn't buy them.
Companies wouldn't buy them if they had
to pay full price for them. Of course, if
the farmers had expensive. Yeah. Yeah.
And so I think on a policy level, there's
a lot that can be done. And it's it's
complicated. It is. Well, it's also
(01:46:59):
complicated. Yeah. And so many people
have like, it's so ingrained in our
system now that the current system of
farming that it would be difficult to go
back to regenerative farming, just like
renewable energy versus, you know, fossil
fuel energy. It's it's
it's it's it's not an easy.
Switch if it was easy, it would probably
been done already. But there's a lot of
people who have a lot of money tied into
these systems. And, you know, they do not
(01:47:21):
want to change. And they want to keep
their lifestyle and they want to keep
their money that they make. And it's and
it can be very difficult. But I love the
fact that, you know, Patches is like
spearheading, just be like, you know
what, like, we're just going to continue
going what we're going to do. And we're
going to show that it can be done. It can
be done well. And we can be successful at
doing it. And I think we just have to
(01:47:41):
ensure that our values are supported.
We have to ensure that our values stay
the same and that we continue to
challenge ourselves to continue to either
grow our product type or even just make
our product even better and better as we
go along as we do more and more research.
And I do love that now to just to kind of
let people know, Patrick, where can
(01:48:01):
people find Patrick to
pick it up and give it a try?
So easiest place, Whole Foods were
nationwide in the frozen section. OK. And
we also sell our bread nationwide through
our website, livepacha.com. There's also,
you know, other independence and some
smaller change chains in Southern
(01:48:22):
California and the Pacific Northwest.
If you want to try to find a physical
location, we have a store locator on our
website that you can check out.
Yeah. Awesome. If you want the tortillas,
you got to buy them online. Wonderful. I
mean, this is great. I think this is
really this is really great to see this
(01:48:45):
company continue to do what it's supposed
to do and to be good for not only the
people that use it, but
also for the environment.
And I love that. I love how you came on
here and spreading your message. It's
fantastic to have you on. I'd love to
have you back on, Maddie. And maybe Adam
would come on next time to you and talk
about more about some of the products
(01:49:05):
that you're doing and some of the more
about regenerative agriculture.
I think we're just scratching the surface
when we come in, how it could be
implemented on a wider scale. But we want
to thank you so much for coming on the
show and sharing your story. Thanks so
much. It was great to be here.
Thank you, Maddie, for joining us on
today's episode of the How to Protect the
Ocean podcast. It was great to have you
on. It was great to speak to someone who
has pivoted so many times in their life
(01:49:27):
to say, hey, you know what? I want to
have an effect on the planet. I want to
make sure that I do something good. And
that's to start a business that not only
has great values, but makes a great
product that people can enjoy. And they
know it's healthy for them. And you don't
market based on that. You market based on
the tastiness and how it fits into their
lives and why they should have it. But I
really think this is something that we
(01:49:48):
need to support more of.
We need to support businesses have these
values no matter what they're selling it
on or how they're marketing their item.
But they have these values regardless
because they want to do something that's
good for the planet because they we need
to do something that's good for the
planet. We need to talk about
regenerative agriculture. This is
something that's extremely important to
not only the company, but also to our
planet and how it can conserve water, how
(01:50:10):
it can make sure that it's something that
is a big thing. It's a big deal. It's
good for the soil, which is good for the
ocean. Eventually, it's good for the planet.
Which is good for you. And I think that
is a great sales pitch in my opinion.
That's how it sells to me. But also it's
great tasting bread and something I wish
I can get access to on a more frequent
basis. But I live here in Canada. And
(01:50:32):
unfortunately, it's not available right
now. Hopefully in the future. But if
you're in the US and you want to get
access to it, I'll put the link in the
show notes. You can find out where it's
being sold. And I think it's Whole Foods.
This is what she said. But so check out
your local Whole
Foods. But this is so great.
It's so great to be able to speak to
someone like Maddie who's got an
oceanography background, understands the
role of the ocean that plays in the
(01:50:53):
regulation of our planet, but also looks
at different aspects of life. Looking at
regenerative agriculture as a way to
protect the planet and to conserve the
planet is something
that's really interesting.
And I just love the fact that she's out
here doing this building a business
that's greater husband who's you know,
multi entrepreneur does a lot of
different things led them to this
(01:51:14):
business here and something that's very
successful. And so that's great with
great values for the planet. So thank you
again, Maddie, for joining us on today's
episode. We're gonna put the links to the
all the things that that will lead her
and connect you with her and the business
of patcha and also buy the product if you can. If you're in the US.
Buy the product. But if you're not just
listen to the story. We don't also we
(01:51:37):
don't need as many scientists in marine
biology or even just conservationists.
Well, of course we need them but not as
many as we need in businesses that will
create great things that have great
values for the planet and for healthy
systems in general. And that's what we
need. So this is a great inspiration for
that. So thank you again to Maddie and
thank you for listening to this episode
(01:51:58):
of the how to protect the ocean podcast.
If you have any questions or comments, please do let us know. And I'll see you next time.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com