Farming for the Future: A Conversation with Keith Morter

Summary: In this episode of the Regenerative By Design podcast, Joni is joined by Keith Morter, a farmer from north-central Oregon, who shares insights about his transition to regenerative farming practices. The discussion explores innovative techniques, market access challenges for diverse crops, and broader implications for sustainable food systems and human health.

Show Notes:

Host: Joni Kindwall-Moore

Guest: Keith Morter, regenerative farmer and President of the Pacific Northwest Direct Seed Association (www.directseed.org)

Topics Covered:

• Overview of Keith's 4,000-acre farm in Oregon and his family's agricultural history.
• Transition from conventional to regenerative agriculture, including direct seeding and reduced reliance on chemical fertilizers.
• Challenges of balancing innovation with economic realities in farming.
• Importance of building resilient food systems and reducing the environmental footprint.
• Market barriers for regenerative products, better infrastructure, and consumer awareness.
• How healthier soil contributes to better crop quality and human health.
• The role of design thinking in addressing agricultural and environmental challenges.

Key Takeaways:

• Regenerative agriculture requires both scientific understanding and intuitive knowledge of the land.
• Transitioning to regenerative farming has long-term benefits but demands patience and learning.
• Market development and consumer education are critical to making regenerative practices viable at scale.
• Innovation in farming can improve crop quality and help address global challenges like climate change and food insecurity.
• Collaboration among farmers, policymakers, and consumers is essential for systemic change.

Call to Action:
Explore the resources and connect with Regenerative By Design to learn more about sustainable farming practices. Share this episode with anyone interested in agriculture, sustainability, and the future of food.

Closing Thought:
Regenerative agriculture isn't just about farming differently—it's about rethinking our relationship with the land, food, and each other to create a healthier, more sustainable world.

Regenerative by Design is hosted by Snacktivist Inc. Snacktivist creates baking mixes and finished products that are allergy-friendly, soil, water, and carbon-focused, all while radically impacting human nutrition by transforming staple foods into something more than just empty calories. Visit snacktivistfoods.com to learn more.

Funding for the Regenerative By Design Podcast was made possible by a grant/cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA. 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Joanna, hello, everyone. You arelistening to the regenerative by

(00:04):
design podcast where we will begetting to the root of health,
climate, economics and food. Iam your host. Joni quinwell
Moore, join me on this journeyas we explore the stories of
individuals and organizationswho are working to realign our
food system with both humanhealth and the health of our
planet. Welcome to theregenerative by design podcast.

(00:25):
We're doing a Saturday recordinghere in Drury, Coeur d'Alene,
Idaho, today, and I've got myfriend Keith mortar joining me.
Welcome Keith. Thank you. Gladto be here. Yeah, I'm happy to
have you. We've been trying todo this for like, couple years,
I think,
yeah, it's been at least acouple years. Yeah, I wouldn't
do it at first, and I finallysaid, Okay, I'll do it. So yeah,

(00:46):
yeah, it's gonna change for me.
I know. Well, you've got a greatstory, and I think more people
need to hear it. And for ourlisteners out there today, you
know, there that are familiarwith our content on regenerative
by design, we're always tryingto unpack these concepts around
the design thinking that isneeded to create a regenerative

(01:07):
world. And when you look atagriculture and you know, field
management, there's always thisconstant conversation we're up
against with folks. And when I'mtalking about regenerative out
in the market world, and theysay, well, there's no way we can
feed the world with thisregenerative ad thing. That's
impossible. We're going to loseall our yields. And, you know,
it's this utopian thing. But,you know, I've Keith, I've been

(01:29):
to your farm, and I I've seenwhat you and Austin do, and I
want you guys to tell your storyand but first, let's just get
started and let us know a littlebit about your farm. Where do
you farm? What makes itdifferent. It's a desert out
there and and that's anotherreally important part of the
story. So take it away for aminute and let let our listeners
know a little bit about

(01:50):
you. Yeah. So we farm northcentral, eastern Oregon, about
an hour south and maybe a littlebit west, or Hermiston, Oregon.
We farm about 4000 acres oftillable land. Total land owned
is about 4500 acres. We raise afew cows. We are primarily a

(02:12):
wheat farm. For the most part.We do raise sorghum, some
sorghum, some sunflowers. Weused to raise barley, but the
price of barley has been so bad,we just can't afford to take the
loss on the on the income. Myparents bought the farm back in

(02:34):
1961 raised I got two olderbrothers, an older sister and
two younger sisters, and four ofsix of us are in agriculture in
one way or another. My parentsare pretty fortunate. We we all

(02:56):
got college educations of somekind or another. They kind of
stressed education to us kids,is was a good thing. Yeah, we so
went to college, like mostpeople do, came back to the
farm, and I guess the summer of91 after I graduated college

(03:19):
from Keith, where'd you go? Justa community college. That's
awesome. Community College,
educated group. I'm just gonnastop for a quick second and say,
like, I talked to a lot offarmers and you guys are one
educated lot. It's incredible.Yeah, by
trade, I'm a mechanic. That'sand I really like to do that.

(03:43):
Unfortunately, my body is brokedown and and doesn't allow me to
do that as much as I used to.But I got a young son that has
kind of taken that over, but socame back to the farm, got into
the farm, and think as a partnerwith my dad and one of my older
brothers about the same time wewere partnered up until about

(04:05):
2006 and then families andeverything that's involved with
families kind of split up thefarm, and they went their way,
and I went my way. Where Icurrently farm is what we call
our home ranch. We had anotherfarm that was a little ways
away. My other brother gottenthe separation, and then so we

(04:31):
were farming conventional. Mydad farmed what we call
conventional agriculture, wherethey go out and they actually
chisel plow the land. Back inthe day, they chisel plot twice,
and Rod weed it, put theirfertilizer on at some point
during the year, and then thenthey would seed it. That was the

(04:52):
program, and that's what theywere told to do. That's what the
universities were promoting backwhen he started farming.
Um. Also, what insurance and allthe other structures,
there wasn't any insurance backthen, was the thing. I mean,
you're talking to 1960s 70s and80s. There was no insurance.
Yeah, insurance didn't comearound until, for us, anyhow, it

(05:14):
didn't come around till the2000s basically, I think you
could get some insurance, but itwas cost prohibitive. Basically,
I mean, you know, what you getin return was, was not that much
for the cost of the insurance.So most people didn't take,
we didn't realize it was thatrecent, yeah, within
the last 25 years, wow, thatwide scale crop insurance was

(05:36):
available, as in disaster. Cropinsurance is what we call it not
hail. And hail insurance hasalways been around. Fire
Insurance has always beenaround, but not drought
insurance, basically, is what,what we're insuring against,
really, yeah, so, so in 2009 Imade the switch constant, that

(05:58):
the switch to direct seeding.And I thought, well, direct
seeding will solve a lot of theissues that we were we were
running into and
direct seeding for direct
seeding, yeah. So in our area,we only get about six to 10
inches of rainfall annually. Itreally, really, really varies.

(06:21):
We're in one of the lowestrainfall areas of wheat
production in the world that'scost effective to farm. It just
a little ways north of me inWashington state, is, is what
they call the horse heavens. Andthat was declared the driest
place in the world that we justis raised. You know, 20 years

(06:43):
ago or something, anyhow. So we,we started to get into direct
seed, which is direct seed is asyou put the seed without any
cultivation, right into thesoil, with all your fertilizer
and all the plant needs rightthere at planning. And typically
we're a fall planted weed areain this area of the state,

(07:08):
and it's going right into thestubble, right like into
the stubble now we have to, we,we summer fall that ground using
chemical chemicals to summerfall that gland. We, we don't
plow it under like we used to.It gets rid of that tension on
the surface of the soil thatallows that makes the water want

(07:29):
to run off of a conventionallyfallowed field in the
summertime. And so we did thatfor a couple years, and then I
got really into variable rateseed grabber, rate fertilizer
got really into for about 10years, got really into grid
sampling, which is where youtake your field on a on a

(07:50):
computer, you break it up intothese, these sections that are
similar to one another, and yougo and you pull soil samples out
of those areas. You send it tothe lab, you look at it, you put
those values back into the map.You look you take your yield
data, you lay your yield dataover that also. And then about

(08:11):
five years into that, I got agrant to get a protein monitor,
so we start laying proteinquality of the grain over the
top of that. Yet we also didEast EC mapping, electro
conductivity mapping, and so welaid that map over the top of
that yet and continue to buildthese maps on top of one
another. And I think we probablyhad five or six maps we were

(08:33):
using to try and help us gain onour yield. And we you could see
where our better better. Ourbetter soils were at more poor
soils were at initially, and mygoal was, is that I our yields
will vary so much under underour environment. I always think

(09:00):
about physics class when I wasin high school and learning
about sine waves from my physicsteacher, and our yields are like
a sine wave. They just go up anddown and up and down and up and
down. And some years they go wayhigh, and then a year later
they'll just drop like a rockback down to, you know, say, 10

(09:21):
bushel acre you might have hadcut 71 year and 10 the following
year. That
is a crazy, crazy variation,yeah,
and so, so it's, it's hard tofinancially get stable in a
system like that, because gotgood, good crops one year and
bad crops the next, you know. Soit's really it was really tough,

(09:42):
you know. So the whole goal wastrying to flatten that sine wave
out. We could still havevariation, but we were trying to
prevent that real bad drop. Butyet, maybe we weren't getting a
maximum amount of yield, but weweren't getting the least amount
of yield a couple years or thenext year, either because we.
Were eliminating that. We weretrying to just limit our

(10:03):
fertilizer from damaging ourcrops. Fertilizer is what was
really, is what really damagesthe crop.
Fertilizer was actually damagingyour practice. Not
we know that, but it takes acertain amount of fertilizer.
That's something most
people don't I mean, like, Italk to you a lot in our

(10:24):
community, so I'm familiar withthis concept. But honestly, the
first time I heard that, I thinkit was maybe 2018 2019, probably
at one of the conferences withyou guys. I it was a mic drop
moment for me. I was like, Wait,did I just hear you? Right? I
think, I think it would bereally important for our
listeners to have you unpackthat a little bit more, because

(10:48):
a lot of people, this is wherethe hang up is for people when
we think about this regenerativeby design process, I think that
the general sentiment out thereis, like, more is always better,
you know. And like, the more youdump on the on to the field, the
more it's going to produce. Andyou guys know, and you have
proof that that is not true.
Yeah. So in our area, we always,we always try to just fertilize

(11:12):
for what we thought the crop wasgoing to be. So and my dad, my
brothers and I never had beenreally big fertilizer consumers,
I guess, on our soil to startwith, and and so I don't know

(11:32):
how to exactly explain thisJohnny, but when you put an
extreme amount of fertilizer Ona field or on an acre, that
plant pulls all that fertilizerup into the system, takes it'll,
it'll raise a really robustgreen, dark green plant with

(11:53):
lots of on wheat. We call ittillers. It'll look really
great, and everything and andthat's what that's what nitrogen
fertilizer does for a crop. Itjust makes it look green, gives
it lots of foliage, but itdoesn't grow any roots. Is the
biggest problem with that wholesystem. And when it does this,

(12:15):
and you have a lack of moisture,and you got all this foliage,
something, something has you'veburned up your basically, your
soil calories, your moisture.Moisture is is everything when
it comes to raising any crop, Idon't even in your garden. If
you don't have good moisture inyour garden, you don't get a
good crop out of your garden.Yeah, it's a limiting reagent.

(12:35):
Always, it's a limiting it's alimiting factor in our area,
there's no doubt about it. Andso you get a great big plant of
wheat out there, and then youdon't get any rain, say, in the
spring of the year, and you'vegot lots of nitrogen on there's
two things happen. One, itstarts pruning the plant back to
what it thinks. It can actually,actually produce seed for the

(12:59):
moisture that's left. And so youit dries out, and then when it
gets closer to actually makingthe seed, it will continue to
prune that down, and will evenprune in the head the number of
seeds that the that the headwill actually produce. And so,
wow, what we were trying to dois pick a rate of seed and a

(13:21):
rate of fertilizer, with ourvariable rate according and
based on our variable rate maps,basically, and knowledge of the
soil. I mean, I'm 55 years old.Been driving tractor since I was
12. How many times I've beenover that land I couldn't count
on. I have no idea how manytimes I've been over that land,

(13:43):
how many times I cut it probablyfour years. Yes, you know the
length, intuition
and just innate wisdom about it,and then you're coupling it with
computer, yeah, which helps yousee things that maybe you just
couldn't see before, or maybe,you know, there was some sort of
bias, or lack of being able topull those variables together.

(14:03):
Really cool. How sophisticatedfarms are these days, yeah.
And so we did that for eightyears, I guess. And so I'm a
member of the Pacific Northwestright Seed Association and I am
the president for this year nextyear. I don't know if that's

(14:25):
good or not, but anyhow, I thinkit was in 2020, let's see. It
was prior to pandemic, and mybrain's a little fuzzy on when
the pandemic was but, but it waslike two years before the
pandemic. We brought JoelWilliams down, and Joel Williams

(14:46):
was talking about fertilizersand and a whole bunch of things.
And these, these soil healthguys get, get you to start to
think. And started thinking alittle bit about crop rotation.
Association couldn't, you know,didn't know where to go with it.
Because there was nobody reallyout there that I could really

(15:09):
ask in the area about, you know,what they had did or what they
had seen there. There was oneguy that had played around with
some stuff, but, but not on aserious scale of any, any size,
you know, and so not
on 4000 acres a lot,

(15:30):
correct? So we so went to theconference the following year,
and they brought in John Kempand, and for those of you who
don't know who John keaf is,he's, he's a soil health guy out
of Ohio. He's an Amish guy. SoI'm sitting in the audience, and

(15:55):
he brings up on the screen, youknow, basically it's in Genesis
where, you know, it says that,you know, man is put on the
earth to take care of the Earthand all its beings. And, boy,
that kind of hit, hit home withme a little bit, you know, kind
of a religious person myself.And I sat there and shook my
head that he'd have guts to dothat. And, yeah, but I was,

(16:18):
I was at that conference, Iremember that. Yeah, he,
before he put that up, he says,No, I know that there's a lot of
farmers out there, and a lot ofyou are good Christians and and
if you're not a Christian, thisisn't meant to upset you, but it
just wants you to make make youaware of this or something, but
something to that being. AndJohn can probably tell you the

(16:40):
exact wording you used, knowingJohn probably used it before,
probably used it before, which,I think it's a good way to start
off his conversation with you,where he comes from. So we
listened to his day, that wholeday, and it was all about crop
rotation and what you'reactually doing to the soil, and
what's your why you're doing it,and cover crops, what they do.

(17:01):
And we just proceeded down thismy wife and I were flying out to
see our daughter and son in lawin Omaha the day after the
conference got over, and we werestaying at the hotel, and John
just happened to be flying outthe next day too, and we sat in
the restaurant and had like, atwo hour conversation, best two
hours time I could have everspent with somebody, yeah, any.

(17:24):
And he started to convince memore and more that I needed to
be trying something, and thatthat that did it for me. That's
that's when I said, Okay, I'mgonna go home and do this. So
our, our fall wheat crop. I kindof like I said, this is all pre
pandemic. So that fall wheatcrop had been planted

(17:46):
conventionally, with allconventional fertilizers and
everything. But I had reallyunder fertilized it because we
didn't know what the spring wasgoing to be. That that's kind of
I was always in this I'm goingto do two passes of fertilizer
on a on our conventional system,before we went regenerative,
we're going to do two passes offertilizer, one in the fall,

(18:10):
wait and see what springbrought, and then put on what we
thought the spring was going tobe after that. Well, we did
that. We put on what we thoughtwould get us through the spring,
and then the spring, we totallychanged our whole mode system to
a regenerative system in thespring, which I don't really

(18:31):
recommend doing if somebody isgoing to go down this
regenerative you want to makethat change when that crop is
planted, and I learned that.I've learned that over the last
couple of years. That makessense. It does make a huge
difference. And so we'vebasically been trying to raise

(18:53):
our crop regeneratively eversince, and John got me
interested in raising all thesecrops that I would have never
thought, like I said, sunflowersand sorghum and and I've thought
about other things, like favabeans and some of that kind of
stuff, but I can only take somuch risk and market there's

(19:16):
just no market development orvalue added processing for
diversity out here,
so that, yeah, I was gonna getto that a little bit. So the
first couple years, we raisedsunflowers and sorghum. We had a
pretty good market for it. Wecould, we could put it into it.
And so unfortunately, two yearsago, we raised some sorghum and

(19:41):
some sunflowers, and we're stillsitting on it. It's a bad deal
sitting on, you know, 30,$40,000 of this crop we can't
move it. Is what it is. I thinkwe might have the sunflower sold
here, which that'd be great. Ifwe do the sorghum, I wanted to

(20:05):
haul it far enough, I canprobably get rid of it. Yeah, it
that the trucking is just that'sour biggest issue. Yeah, it
kills. It is exactly right. Mm,hmm. So two years, three years
ago, we started using theCalifornia what do they call it?

(20:28):
California Commission, wheatlabs down in California, the
Claudia Carter, yeah,
and she was on season one forpeople who are listening
Claudia, we had a really awesomesession couple years back. So,
yeah,
I've never met her. John Kempgave me her contact information,

(20:51):
and I called her up, and westarted talking. So I decided to
send her down some some samples.And she calls me back and says,
What are you doing to your toyour wheat? And I said, Well,
what do you mean? What am Idoing on my wheat? And she goes,
Well, some of this is thehighest stuff we've ever seen
tested in this lab for bakingquality. And so I, when I

(21:21):
started getting hold of Jonihere, and said, Hey, I got this.
And Johnny's been marketingaround and and it's just really
tough. And when you have, youknow, mortgages to meet and
everything, sometimes you got tosell a product you really don't
want to sell into the openmarket. And I always wondered,
you know, like most of the wheatin the Pacific Northwest gets,

(21:43):
gets shipped out to the thePacific Rim countries of of
Asia. A lot of wheat goes intoJapan and South Korea and the
Philippine Islands and Malaysiaand and and those countries over
in there. And I always havewondered, you know, you haul in,
you know, 30,000 bushel of ofwheat that is off the charts for

(22:07):
baking, and they start millingit, and it screws up their whole
mix that they're doing, becauseall of a sudden your baking
quality is way higher than whatthey are anticipating. Yeah,
yeah. And you always, I guess,I've always kind of wondered
what they what they think whenthat comes through there. It's
like, you know, it's as time hasgone by and we've, we've

(22:29):
continued to do this over thelast three years, we have found
some mills that are interestedin what we're what we're doing
with our wheat and and it's big,it'll be good for us if we can
continue to do, do the flourmill thing within the states
here. But markets. I can'tstress this enough to raise some

(22:53):
of these other crops that that Iwould like to raise. I have to
have the market.
We had to have coordinationbetween market development and
development of programs at thefield level, so that we're
driving diversity in the field.But that's not going to work if
we're not driving diversity onthe market side. And that's
what's so frustrating about thiswhole regenerative thing, is any

(23:16):
and all of the investment that'sgone into the regenerative
movement all goes to the farm orlike certain parts, but nobody
wants to invest in developingmarket side. I mean, I've
learned that the hard way. And,you know, there's just no no no
reward for it. And so that'swhat puts a stalemate in the
entire system. And one of theonly people out there really

(23:39):
trying to work on it can't getinvestment money, so you end up
working for free, you know, likeyou're just a philanthropy
person without anybody, yeah?Like nobody, you know. I mean, I
spent the better of four yearstrying to raise money to really
do this, and couldn't getanybody interested. Yeah. I
mean, we raised a tiny bit ofmoney, but not enough to

(24:01):
actually really get, get what weneeded to get done, done. You
know, it's just frustrating.Didn't raise a dime this year,
not one penny. So it's, it'sjust, you know, no matter how
much we go to these, you know,investors and whatnot, we're
like, look, you know, we've evenstarting to get interested
parties, but you can't. If youdon't have any support
financially. You don't have anystaff. You don't, you know,

(24:23):
like, can't really get the thingdone. So we've got to have the
world wake up and go, Okay, ifwe're going to make this
regenerative thing work, we havegot to figure out how to bridge
the gap between the market andthe in the fields, and that
involves value added, processingand orchestration of supply
demand within the system so thatit's creating a holistic model

(24:46):
that supports regeneration. Weabsolutely do not have that
today. It doesn't exist. Well,here in another month, if I can
raise money, we will have it.But we just need, if we need
investors, to actually lean inand get this done. Yeah.
And you know, what reallyirritates me is everybody thinks
it's really easy to be aregenerative grower, you know?

(25:08):
And when we spend a lot of time,there's a lot to it. We spend a
lot of time on testing, we spenda lot of time sitting our butts
in the sprayer, because insteadof putting all your nutrients in
your soil, which we don't doanymore, and we basically fully
are applying in the nutrients.It, it, it's just a tough

(25:30):
business, you know,
to keep I mean, I like knowingyou, all of you regenerative
folks in the Inland Northwest,like you guys invest an
incredible amount of time inlearning and conferences and
podcasts and books, and I mean,you guys are very voracious

(25:50):
learners, and I feel like youguys also really paid attention
to the nuances of your plants,SAP testing, like a whole nother
level of soil testing, andthat's that is time and money
that is invested into your farm.
Yeah. I mean, I'll spend allweek at this direct Seed

(26:12):
Conference. And anyway, inJanuary, it says 6/7, and eighth
and and, you know, I'll comeaway with some new idea that
we'll want to try, you know, butour our agronomists that we
really rely upon, has has reallyhelped a lot, because, yeah,
it's applying it, it'sunderstanding exactly what

(26:34):
you're doing. And then you can'tjust find the ingredients that
we need by going down to thelocal fertilizer shop, because
they're not going to help youfind these ingredients. These
ingredients. It takes a specialit takes a special person or
special nice facility to do whatwe need to a has a line of
products. There's a couple ofdifferent lines of products out

(26:55):
there that are really goodproducts, but there's an expense
with with these products too,and they're really they can be
really expensive. Yeah,
the banks don't always want tocover it either from what it's
it's not like in the normalprescription, you know.
And so that's starting to changesomewhat at the banking level,

(27:19):
at the national level, at thenational banking level, they're
starting to starting to get anunderstanding that maybe, you
know, some of the same exactlyhealthy for the environment and
the people. And they've gotpeople on both sides of the of
the street, the health consciouspeople, and then the farmers

(27:39):
that they're also loaning moneytoo, and they've got
stockholders and everythingelse. So there the banks, some
of the banks and national banksare starting to change.
We're trying to get more data toshow that the investments in
these regenerative amendmentsand management interventions are
actually de risking the farms,you know, overall loan for the

(28:03):
year, because there's a lot moreresiliency. There's a lot more
drought resiliency. There's alot more stability with, you
know, making sure that you'regoing to get a crop against all
odds. And so, you know, as westart to develop more robustness
around those kind of, basically,data frameworks that can support
the hypothesis. I think that'swhere we're going to see a lot

(28:25):
of change in policy aroundbanking and insurance. That's
like, hey, actually theseregenerative methodologies,
there's an upfront cost, butboy, it's in the long run, it's
de risking the investmentoverall, like you're going to
have more success the
whole point in regenerativeagriculture really is, is to get

(28:46):
your biology and your microbialsand your fungi to actually work
for you. You know, everybodytalks about storing carbon, you
know, and the farmland is someof the biggest sink for for
carbon there is. But the problemis, mainstream agriculture,
every time there, there's somekind of a plant ailment out
there, it's all about sprayingthat problem instead of asking,

(29:11):
you know, why is that there? Whyis that weed there? Why is that
there? Well, the reason thatthat disease is there is because
you have an unhealthy soil thatallowed that disease to creep in
on that plant. And the same goesthe same goes for weed in our
area, probably the biggest fourweeds we have to deal with are

(29:32):
Russian tussle kosher. We callit marestail, and then prickly
lettuce, or China let usWhichever name you prefer for
for that one, but and they'reall there for a specific reason.
And when we went to regenerativeagriculture, not that we don't

(29:53):
have Russian Tesla anymore, butit is pretty low on the totem
pole from where it used to bewhen we started into the direct
seed thing. Now, our mayor'stail and our prickly lettuce are
probably some of our biggestones. And if you really deep, do
a deep dive into the soil, thereason that they're there is
because through chemicals thatwe've applied to the soil, and

(30:17):
the way that certain chemicalsreact in the soil, they've tied
those micronutrients up in thesoil. And if you take a plant
SAP analysis on prickly lettuce,throughout the year of its
growth, it contains very highlevels of micronutrients in the

(30:38):
plant. So it is mining themicronutrients out of the plant
or out of the soil, which aretied up due to the chemistries
that we have applied over thelast 70 years of chemistries
being used on the soil. Veryimportant point, Keith and so if

(30:59):
you think about weeds as weeds,and you think they're bad, and
you just go spray them withRoundup. I'll just use Roundup,
because that's the one everybodyknows. If you go out and just
spread with Roundup, and youthink that's going to kill it,
well, certain weeds now areresistant to Roundup. And you
ask, Well, why are theyresistant to Roundup? Well,

(31:22):
they've developed an internalclock. They've changed
genetically to be able to wardoff the micronutrient in the
plant that they are actuallythat that chemical actually
targeted in order to kill thatplant. And so these
micronutrients, least on wheat,we are finding micronutrients

(31:45):
are the number one problem withthe wheat crop we're raised, and
I don't care what micronutrientis, not that we still don't
apply nitrogen, but we'reapplying about third or less of
the amount of nitrogen we usedto apply. It's it's one of the
lower input costs we have todeal with today. But on our farm

(32:09):
anyhow, our biggestmicronutrients that we're having
to put on are zinc, copper,molybdenum, nickel. Those are
some of the biggest ones we haveto apply just about every time
we're applying fine.
Your area naturally low in thoseor is it more tied up to, you

(32:30):
know, tied to the fact thatthey're chelated with chemicals
that are there from previous
to do with their chelated withthe chemicals in the soil and
and so we have found, by puttingthat on there and not putting on
so much nitrogen, that we're nothaving to spray for things like
rust. Well, how do you get ridof us? Do you spray a fungicide

(32:52):
on and get rid of rust? And, youknow, I went to a seminar here
the other day, and they'retalking about spring fungi on
and, and the guy that wastalking about it says, you know,
there's some people out herethat are saying, you know, you
want to be careful of this,because you're doing a lot of
damage to your soils. And hesays, there's a valid point in
this. You are doing damage toyour soil. You know, fungi are

(33:15):
where the carbon stored at. Andso if you're looking at a carbon
contract and you're saying,well, they're, they're going to
pay me $50 an acre for thiscarbon to be stored in the land,
you know? And you're in aconventional system, you might
be like some foreign farmer inIowa that took a big contract
from General Motors, and thenall of a sudden he can't meet

(33:37):
his carbon contract. Now he owesGeneral Motors money. Yeah,
exactly. And so just you want tobe cautious of that type of the
system until you know how you'reable to store the carbon,
yeah, and you've got thatmicrobial ratio, you know, only
towards a regenerative balance,
correct? And our goal is to toactually get to the point where

(34:01):
maybe we're only having to applyone or two micronutrients a
year, and they may not ever bethe same one from year to year,
but for some reason, we're notable to extract it out of the
soil. You know, we we hadChristine Jones at a seminar
down in Colton, Washington thisyear. Yeah, mind boggling

(34:24):
lecture, I have to say that was
the biggest thing. She said isquit putting phosphate down and
put putting fungicide on yourseat, and you will get your
fungi. You'll get your phosphateout of your soil. If you quit
putting it down and you and youquit putting fungi on, fungicide
on your seed, yeah. Andeverybody goes, well, how do you

(34:46):
get away without puttingfungicide down? Well, we're
using a worm castings extract,and we apply the worm castings
extract with a couple otherthings on the seed, and that
protects the seed. And you.Within 24 hours, in general, in
our area, we can get our seedsprouted, and within 48 hours we

(35:09):
got the end of sperm coming out,the radical coming out, and the
roots are going down withinwithin 48 hours of germination.
And that's pretty beautiful soilaggregation around those roots.
You've sent me pictures a fewdays after they're planted, and
it's like there's so muchexudate that's protecting that

(35:31):
delicate little root.
And that delicate little rootjourney is what, well that,
yeah, that's what they'redelicate. That's what the fungi
attached to, is that delicatelittle root, you know, and I'm
not an expert in that. I mean,there's a lot of people that are
can better explain what actuallytakes place than what I can

(35:52):
explain happens. But to me, it'sall about the root. I think it
was, I don't know if it was JohnKemp with sand, or Rick Clark or
who, or somebody else that I'velistened to over the years.
Basically, you whatever you haveabove the ground, you want one

(36:14):
or three quarters of that belowground. So if you have six
inches of plant on top, you want18 inches of root below that
well, and they say you canactually get more roots in that
if, if you do everythingperfect. And so that's our goal
is, is to get more root down onthe plant. It's all about the

(36:35):
roots that you can get the in myarea, I can raise a good wheat
crop if I can get that plant toroot down, yeah, yeah,
which is like, the opposite ofwhat we you know, the goals were
30 years ago where people wereactually kind of like, oh,
that's just a waste ofmetabolism effort, you know,
developing all these big, deeproots and, you know, we don't

(36:58):
want the plants secreting alltheir sugar into the
rhizosphere, because thenthey're wasting energy that they
could be putting into yield.And, you know, now we, we're
looking at it so differently.
So, you know what, really, whatreally irritates me is, is, you
got 10s of 1000s acres of solarpanels out there, you know, and

(37:18):
you're gonna, you're gonna saveall this carbon going in the
environment, you know, from notburning fossil fuels anymore,
but yet they go out there andthey sterilize under those solar
panels and kill everything outfrom underneath those solar
panels. Yeah. So if a fire comesthrough, they're not burning up
their solar farm, and they'recapturing the sunlight, just

(37:41):
like my wheat plants do. Thecat, that wheat Croc, is a big
solar panel, is what it is,yeah. And so, you know, it's
pulling, it's pulling in thesunlight, making chlorophyll.
The chlorophyll is pulling inthe carbon, and the plants are
exuding the carbon out the rootsinto the soil, defeating all
the, all the little animals thatare in the soil, and then the

(38:05):
plant exudates oxygen, and yetthey want to put in all these
1000s acres solar panels on allthose good, good producing
farmland. And people need to beworried about that who consume
food and rely upon farmers to toto produce it solar
panels going on good, viablefarmland, because, like you

(38:26):
said, they're just nuking itunderneath with toxic chemicals.
I mean, voltaics, like that. Iget like that can be great,
especially for crops that need alittle shade, you know, like, or
you're doing some grazingunderneath, yeah, but to just go
out there and nuke it chemicalwarfare style, then put a bunch
of solar panels on top, just tome, seems completely asinine. It

(38:50):
just doesn't make sense
to me. It is roofs
and asphalt parking lots thatcould have them on there. You
know, exactly,
exactly every, every house andyou know, in these cities, these
needs to be, have solar panels.Yeah, manufacturing
malls like you, think about allthe parking lots cool, put solar
panels on top of there. That's awin win for so many reasons. But

(39:14):
going out to viable farmland andmaking it unusable is crazy.
Give you
a context about how much power,how many acres it takes to make
one megawatt of power. It takessix acres. I this is what I
heard a while back, and I'llprobably be told I was wrong on
this, which that's fine, but ittakes six acres of solar panels

(39:37):
to make one megawatt of power.So we're where we live, to the
north of us and a little biteast. They're putting in 40,000
acres of solar panels. Wow. Andthey're paying the growers
enough money that the growerssay that they cannot. Farm that

(40:00):
land and make that much moneyfarming the land. So when people
talk about the high price offood, if agricultural land keeps
getting shoved into industrialelectrical stuff, just so people
in town can turn in their livesand feel good about, you know,

(40:22):
being being green all the time.Well, they can do the same thing
if they want regenerative andstore that carbon, yeah, in the
soil, using nature, yeah, eventhe nature you know,
you know, it's you need to bringit back to a nature based

(40:43):
system, and that would correct alot of the problems. But so many
of these, you know, so calledsolutions, are so reductionistic
and still so completely side ofnature based systems and nature
based solutions that God onlyknows what other externalities
will come from that, becauseit's not thinking holistically.

(41:05):
Yeah,
yeah. And, you know, the otherthing is, on a, on a bad solar
day, on a, you know, badsunlight day, they're not making
one megawatt on six acres. Youknow, it's only on a good, good,
clear day that they'll make thatkind of production. It's kind of
like, when I on our farm, I'drather have wind towers, and the

(41:26):
ugliness of a wind tower versusthat, at least I still can use
the soil for something. Yeah,you still
have good, usable land that canbe productive, growing food and
sequestering carbon, and, youknow, creating systems, you
know, like, that's the thing is,once you kill all that land and
you make it a desert, rainfalls. It just, it doesn't
absorb. It just floods off ofit, and it causes erosion and

(41:49):
like, there's just so manyexternalities associated with it
that people don't think aboutthat worry people like us. And I
mean, you're one of the guys. Ihave a quote of you that I I
have somewhere. I don't thinkit's on the website, but
it's a great quote, and it
says to send it to you, but itsays, and I have a recording of

(42:12):
you saying this. You're like,well, you know, I realized one
day, do I want to be a slave tothe soil, or do I want to be a
slave to the chemical companies?And I just decided I want to be
a slave to the soil. I alwaysthought that was such a great
quote.
Well, I still believe thattoday, I'd rather be a slave to
the soil than the slave to thechemical company. Yeah. So yeah.
I mean, just back to this powerthing for a second. Yeah. It

(42:37):
takes one acre of land, if youinclude all the road and
everything for a wind tower toget two and a half megawatts of
power to, I think they're up totwo and three quarter megawatts.
That's more than and so, sothat's 12 acres of land that
that you would have that's over,that's almost 3014, about 15

(42:57):
acres of land that you'd have totake out of production and put
solar panels on to get the sameamount of production, power
production. Yeah, and I totallyagree with why aren't these
cities got solar panels on everybuilding? Why isn't there a tax
incentive for these homeownerssolar panels on everyone? Yeah?

(43:23):
But, but. And in some areas,like down California, it's
required, when you build a newhouse, to be putting these solar
panels on. I have a real problemwith making things that are
mandated. You know, I guess I'mtoo conservative when it comes
to that, make it in a taxincentive on their property

(43:44):
taxes. Yeah, incentivize itthrough a tax reduction that
means something to them, notjust on their income taxes, but
have it on their property taxesor something. Yeah, that will
get people's attention quicker.That'll get people's attention
quicker than anything.
Yeah, I think so too. I don'tknow if you've ever been to this

(44:05):
air Nevada brewery, but theyhave, like, the solar panels
over their parking lot, if Iremember correctly. And it was
so cool, because it was like, itit made it to where I think
their brewery, in the summermonths, anyways, was Net Zero.
Like, it didn't need to pull anypower, pulled it right off the
parking lot. It wasn't reallycool. I think
that all these big parking lots,you go around, all these big

(44:27):
manufacturing facilities, andthey got acres and acres and
acres of parking lots, you know,yeah, you're like, you know,
that's just dead soil underneaththere. How about we use the
sunlight, you know? Yeah,
heating and all of the stuff. Soyeah,
provide state for people'svehicles and everything else. I

(44:48):
mean, I just sit as a good win,win. Yeah, it is getting some
traction. People are starting torealize maybe the saying is wise
is what we want stock. Andpeople ask, Well, why? Why
aren't we placing solar panelson. In on unused land. Well, it
comes down to the EndangeredSpecies Act.

(45:08):
Now, there are some areas thatwould be perfect candidates for
that, but there's regulatorythings that prevent it. So,
yeah, I know this is reallysticky for sure, yeah, and it's
the cost of building power linesinto some of those places too.
You know, where there's 40,000acres of solar panels is going

(45:29):
in. I mean, they've already gothigh voltage power lines coming
up there for windmillproduction. They're hooking onto
those high voltage power lines,and you're just going, Okay,
well, I can understand it, but Ithink it's totally ridiculous,
well, and this is the wholedesign thinking process, like,
you know, and that's why we callthis show regenerative by

(45:49):
design. It's like, how do wereally think through the design
theory of all of these things sothat we're truly considering the
true cost, you know, all theseexternalities. Like, does it
make sense? Is this resilient?Is this realigning our systems
with positive human healthoutcomes and climate resiliency,

(46:11):
you know? Like, literally, theresiliency picture, like, Does
this make sense on a long timehorizon, and so many of the
things that we do don't, they'veclearly not been thought out
through a long time horizon, andit's frustrating. So,
yeah, so that kind of, you know,you were talking about human
health there, you know, thishuman health thing is really,

(46:32):
you know, yeah, it's a big dealpeople, the cancer rates and at
least the United States, orthrough the roof the diabetes
rates, or through the roof.That's, you know, I'm in no way
an environmentalist, but itworries the hell out of me,
because I'm looking at, I gotgrandkids, you know, I've got a

(46:54):
niece is a diabetic. You know,I've got several cousins that
are diabetics. I know a familythat they have two young kids,
when they were, like, two yearsold or three years old, found
out that they were each each ofthese kids were diabetics, both
in the same family,
auto immune response to things,and all of those things are

(47:16):
skyrocketing, type one, TypeTwo, chronic inflammatory
disease, cancer rates, and we'rereally reacting to a very toxic
environment, and it's time wedid something about it.
Yeah, and so I look at what Itry, what I'm trying to do by
raising a much healthier productfor consumers, whatever the

(47:36):
processors do with it. I mean,if I ever had the opportunity to
talk direct to a flower company,I'd say, Look, I'm raising a
superior product. How about wetry to market this as a superior
product? You know, here's theyou got, you got somebody that
wants to mill this. You're theyou're the name brand. How

(47:58):
about, instead of milling downmy product to meet your spec by
dumping a bunch of garbage intoit, you actually just mill my
product straight through andcall it a platinum flower or
something like that. Value thatit is, yeah, yeah, exactly you

(48:20):
know, because Claudia wouldn'tcall me up and say, you know,
hey, what are you doingdifferent that this week's off
the charts, you know? And andAndrew Ross Oregon State
University, who does a lot oftesting for new varieties in the
Northwest on their millingqualities. I showed him the the
printout that Claudia gave me,and he goes, he grabs, after I

(48:42):
showed it to him, we talked awhile. He grabs by the arm, and
he says, you know, that's veryunusual. What you have, that's
when, when, when, when you getanother person that that's what
they do, is they test all theflowers, yeah, for, for, for
basically all the Northwest.That's telling me I must be
headed down the right road,yeah, well,
the question I sent your specsoff to a Miller. He goes, where

(49:05):
did you get this? This is reallyremarkable, yeah, and 18 months
to get there. But, you know,early on, I was hitting the COO
and the and the CEO, you know,to try to be like guys like

(49:25):
that, you know, I know it's aways away from your current
mill, but you need to be payingattention to this. And then
yesterday, I talked to a flowerbrand that is going to be buying
through that whole chain. And Iwas like, Look, we've really got
to differentiate this and andhelp you guys get there so you
can make that commitment on thebranded side. Because on the
branded side and on the marketside, these are the things that

(49:48):
a lot of folks on the supplychain side don't understand
fully. Is that you can't releasea product if you can't scale it.
Really do. I mean, like, they'relike, so it's, it's this
delicate balance of bringing to.Gather the supply and demand and
making sure that it's scalable,because the unit economics don't
actually work to create aproduct with a very limited

(50:10):
amount of it. If you're going togo into retail distribution, the
only way you can do that is aone off thing online or Amazon,
where you can toggle switch iton and off based on
availability, which can drivepremium because then it's
limited edition. But we have amassive disconnect with the
consumer channels. So if you'retrying to go into national
distribution and you're like,This is a special we it's really

(50:31):
high quality, we think peopleare going to love it. Well, the
retailer is going to say, Well,what's going to happen when you
run out? Because we're not goingto let you just run out and have
an empty shelf slot withoutcharging you, because realtor
real The reality is, is thatgrocery is a real estate game.
It's not a quality game. And sothese are the pieces of the
puzzle that have to be broughttogether to solve this issue.

(50:55):
And you know, we're working onall of that, and we're getting
closer all the time, but, youknow, it was a real wake up
call, you know, in marketingyour wheat to bakeries that they
were like, well, this is afinite amount, you know, like,
like, it just the reality is somuch more difficult. I was
shocked because, boy, I spent alot of time circulating that.

(51:15):
And, you know, I never, neverwas able to get anything to the
finish line. So it's, you know,it just was a bigger lesson to
me of what we're up against froma systems level perspective. And
hence, that's why I'm shiftingmy work to doing what I'm doing
now, to try to bring thattogether and create some
digitization around it. Butit's, it's really a major hurdle

(51:38):
we're up against with the foodsystem, because we're never
going to have a healthy one ifwe're still using this broken
rule book of how the marketswork and the disconnect between
quality supply chains andquality food products, that's
why we have a garbage in,garbage out system that's making
us sick, right?
I mean, think about this. Youknow, you hit it. You hit
something that was veryimportant. It's economy of

(52:02):
scale, yeah, and I'll just giveyou an example people, people
don't probably real, reallyrealize this. So where Nabisco
makes all their cookies thatplant here in the Northwest
produces 15,000 cookies an hour.So you figure out how much,

(52:26):
figure out how much raw producthas to move into that plant
every day to make 15,000 cookiesan hour is unreal, yeah. And you
just sit down. If there's 45cookies in a bag, just sit down
and figure out how many bags aday are leaving there? How many
truckloads of cookies areleaving that facility in a day?

(52:48):
And so, you know, I don't havethe marketing ability to go out
here and put in a milliondollars worth of infrastructure
to clean that flop, to cleanthat wheat, to to buy a mill, to
buy a mill, stone mill, grindit, bag it, and then sit on

(53:09):
Yeah, that much product, no, andthen hope to market it through a
365, day a year. No, you
can't. It doesn't even makesense. It's like, that's why we
have to have aggregatedinfrastructure that still can
maintain provenance and quality.You know, there's, there's,
there's some really new waysemerging where we can get this
done without having to put thepressure on farmers to be

(53:29):
vertically integrated, becausethat does not economically work
very well. It's really tough topull off. Some can do it, but
most it's it's really a hugeheavy lift. But speaking of
Nabisco and these big CPGcompanies, they have lost a lot
of market share because peopleare starting to lose their taste
for super hyper processedgarbage. And whether it's

(53:50):
because of the injectable weightloss drugs like the GLP ones, or
if it's just a shift post COVIDand a younger generation coming
in saying we don't want to eatthat garbage, like Keebler
doesn't do it for us, likethey're going to have to make a
change. And that's where I'mfocused, is like, how can we
approach these larger companiesand go you guys have a problem.

(54:11):
A, consumers want a betterquality product, but they still
want it to be affordable, so weneed to do it at scale. B, you
guys have a terrible climatefootprint, your externalities
and your impact of greenhousegas emissions is insane. Because
you're while we're shipping ourwheat to Asia, that plant here
in the Northwest is buying alltheir wheat from Kansas,
probably. So think about all theunnecessary trucking that's due

(54:32):
to just a lack of coordinationand planning. And so if we
really focus on those two marketpressures that they're going to
have to respond to to keep inthe positive on their P and L,
because that's going to tankthem eventually. You know,
they're going to have to makethat switch. And so that's where
right now, like, we're like,okay, how can we be an asset to
them? How can we can come inwith our teams and say, Hey,

(54:55):
we've got this incrediblenetwork of farmers that have
been doing it for a long time.They're at scale. So they're,
they're they have proven thatthe methodology is there to
produce higher quality food withlower chemical footprint and a
better environmental soilfootprint. You just need to buy
it, and we need to coordinate itto get through the value chain
using good positive uniteconomics, like you know what we

(55:16):
know for efficiencies, but we'regoing to maintain that focus on
effectiveness. We're going tobalance efficiencies and
effectiveness at the same time,and that way, we can empower the
people like Nabisco, who havedistribution all over the
freaking world to actuallydeliver a product that's not
killing Americans. That's theproblem. Yeah, it's

(55:38):
the scale tech. I don't want tobe a farmer that claims to be a
farmer and I sit in my officeall day, every day. I'm not that
kind of person. Drives me crazy.I can't stand to sit in and at
the end of the year, let alone365, days a year. And I'm more

(56:01):
concerned about soil and havingsomething to pass on to the next
generation right now, and and,and as long as I have a
generation that's wanting to,that's coming up, wanting to
take it over, which I'm lucky Ihave my son, and all of my
brothers and sisters have familymembers that want to take it

(56:22):
over, take their operationsover. You know, that's a rare,
rare thing anymore. You know,kids get waves on a farm, and
they think there's easier fishto fry than sitting on a tractor
14 hours a day for two or threeweeks. Or community, too, very
rural community, you know. Butto me, I like that kind of an

(56:45):
area. Yeah, I go to Portland,and it just drives me nuts,
yeah, it does, you know.Unfortunately, Spokane does too,
you know. And it's not nearly asbig as Portland is, you know,
it, you know, I guess I'm tryingto provide a good product for

(57:07):
for for the mother out therethat that wants to feed their
their kids, a whole grainproduct, that is that they know
was not sprayed with Roundup inthe crop here, that knows that I
Did my absolute best toeliminate, at least on the crop,
any kind of of chemical productsgoing on that crop, to raise

(57:27):
that crop, sort of minerals thatthe body needs, and, and, and,
you know, the body needs acertain amount of iron, it needs
a certain amount of calcium, itneeds a certain amount and needs
all these micronutrients thatcurrently our flowers are kind
of missing, and I really thinkthat that's why our baking
quality is through the roof. Iswe're providing that plant

(57:48):
everything it needs, and so inturn, it bakes at a higher
quality. Yeah, and I think themill we're hauling going to
start hauling weed into here inabout a month. I'm really hoping
that when he gets the secondmill built, that that that his
people that he's selling totakes a good look at what we're

(58:10):
doing, and everybody wants acertification. Everybody wants
you to certify certification. Ithink certifications have went
over the top. You know, organicscame out. You know, they kept
weakening the organic criteriaover time, and now organics

(58:34):
really aren't the organics thatwe started out with. You know,
the restrictions on organicsaren't the same as they used to
be and become
so industrialized, yeah, yeah.And
I would rather somebody buy abag of flour and have the QR
code on that thing that sayswhere that flower was bought at,

(58:58):
and you could go to the nextpage and actually see what was
all put on that bag of flour atthe farmer level, so that you
know what you're buying. Yep, Iwould like segregation to get to
that point to where, to wherethe consumer knows exactly what
they're they're buying. And ifthe commercial guys don't want

(59:20):
to do that, then allow thelittle the little producers of
of the little mills to do it andfill that market, because
there's going to be a certainamount of mothers out there and
dads too. Quite often, ifmother's very health conscious,
the father is too, if they wantto spend the extra $3 a bag on a

(59:44):
five pound bag of flour, becausethey can put their phone up to
read that QRS code, go to thenext page. See that Keith mortar
raised that weed. Here'severything he sprayed on that
crop. This is how that crop wasraised. Click on a little video.
Oil that shows this is how ourcrop was raised and be off with

(01:00:04):
it. Yeah. In my area, we stillhave to use some some chemicals
to make summer fall, but fromwhat we're being told, the more
the soil changes, things changedwhere we might not be having to
use chemicals in the future tomaybe control some of our weeds.
Yeah,
and I think that's where themarket could also help. Because

(01:00:25):
if you know, if you have moremarket paths for diverse crops,
and you know, can actually havesummer planting, and you don't
have to have that summer fallowanymore, because you can plant
something like pros and millet,suddenly, suddenly, you don't
need you've just eliminated alot of the chemical and follow
time. So,

(01:00:46):
you know, the other thing,Johnny, most people don't
realize is, when you mill awheat product and you put it in
a bag, it is oxidized within twodays where it's lost. All of us
are the quality has went down onit. Yeah, and that's a bad deal.
And the other thing people don'tunderstand is you can go to the

(01:01:07):
USDA agriculture department, andif you know where to go, you can
actually print off a wheat flourlabel, right off their website
that's accepted by USDA whetherthat bag of flour even meets
that criterion. And I hope, Ihope that Robert Kennedy throws
a bunch of that stuff out. Ihope that's not allowed anymore.

(01:01:28):
Yeah, I hope that they actuallyhave to spend the money on the
testing and change their labelinstead of you go from bag to
bag in the store and it's allthe same damn stuff,
prohibitively expensive forcompanies trying to do it,
especially startups like at thatrequirement, we would have not
been able to even start snackdevices because we
didn't. I agree with that. Buthow are you going to get society

(01:01:50):
to change Exactly?
Well, that's why we need we needto have more access to cost
effective testing. I mean, whenwe got started, if we were doing
testing on our ingredients. Itwould have cost us just to do a
run, you know, like 1000 poundrun. It would have cost us 1000s
of dollars in testing. So nowyour price per pound is like,
you know, sky high,

(01:02:12):
yeah. So because it's plant SAPanalysis that we use on the
crop, there's two labs in theworld that I trust. And then
there's a third one I wouldn'ttrust at all. And I mean, one of
them's in the other ones, andones in Michigan and and, you
know, the costs aren't bad. Tohave a test for what you're

(01:02:36):
getting out of the out of thetest. We
need good testing to come downin price. I mean, it's luckily,
like it's radically changing,like in the last year, but, you
know, it hasn't historicallybeen something that even the big
companies could justify, like itwas very expensive. You
know, what really gets me isthat the these big food

(01:02:57):
companies got labs themselves.So I kind of,
they don't want people to know,because they're not selling
something great, but littlecompanies like us who are like,
we're buying, you know, we, youknow, like on our batches of
sorghum that we've purchasedand, you know, we're already,
we're barely able to get withina price point that's even close

(01:03:20):
to acceptable by the public. Youknow, you throw on another
$1,000 of testing per lot andwhoa, that you're done. You
know, there's just not enoughpeople who care. But I think
that's changing toohistorically, there's not been
enough people who cared.
I think in the next five years,least the next four years, we're
going to see some seriouschanges come out of USDA on

(01:03:42):
food, food processing, food,food requirements, you know,
and reporting on exposure totoxins like desiccants and
stuff. And you know, what'sfrustrating is, last year, I
spent 18 months building thetechnology needed to deliver a
fully QR code connectedexperience. And unfortunately,
that isn't available now due tosome unfortunate circumstances

(01:04:06):
that were outside of my control.But you know, we're, we're,
we're putting that backtogether. So by the end of next
year, we should be able to offerthat full digitized transparency
to a QR code and the story andyeah, so if you're the praying
type, say a prayer that we canfinally get the money behind us.
Money behind us. We need to getthis done, and we we can have
all this. It could be a reality.We have all the technology

(01:04:28):
needed. We have all the designframeworks in place. We just
need the money to build it andget it done. It could totally
and then when you can partnerwith labs that are doing this
kind of testing, and then youhave an aggregate like, so that
you can have better,approachable pricing, you know,
because you're like, hey, look,you know, we've got these 500
food companies that all wantthis kind of testing, you know,

(01:04:50):
can we bundle this and we'regoing to report it via QR code
so that it's live reporting.Then you can start to move the
needle. You just can't do it ona bootstrap budget. It like, you
know, oh, hi, we're gonna, youknow, like, save up a couple of
bucks for, like, weekend workand get this done. It just
doesn't work that
way, right, correct? No, Ireally understand that. So it's

(01:05:11):
so
frustrating, because we couldhave all this stuff, like, we've
already built it, and it's justright at the tip of our fingers,
you know. So, you
know, it comes back. It comesback to the market. You know,
does the market? Is the marketwilling to change, you know, um,
to where I think there's somepeople coming into USDA that

(01:05:38):
through federal programs offarmers, yet that could change
how we look at agriculturealtogether here in the next four
or five years, what farmers arerequired, I
think we're gonna see thebiggest change in our lifetime,
about the same age as you Are,Keith and you know, couple years

(01:06:01):
younger, but you know, like inour lifetime, I mean, we've seen
the kind of development ofpolicy and culture around food
and food quality through the70s, 80s, 90s, and I think that
we're going to see more changein the next five years than
we've seen in the last 50 and ina Good direction of like, going
back to the basics, and thatreprioritization of like, what

(01:06:25):
is the point of calories? Andwhat is the point of, you know,
feeding the world, if what we'refeeding the world is killing us,
causing an epidemic of cancerand diet related disease that's
costing trillions of dollars andimpacting our GDP and our
quality of life, like we'vewe've got, we've lost sight of
that, especially when it'strashing our farmlands to boot.
So it's happening. I mean, Ithis is why I wanted to have you

(01:06:48):
on the show, Keith, because youand I, you're a good friend of
mine, and we, we, we spent a lotof time solving this stuff over
the phone, so I'm glad wefinally got to unpack on the on
this podcast, and we are goingto wrap it up. We might have to
do another second session atsome point.
One thing to say here, mothersout there to think about this a

(01:07:09):
little bit. They've got kids inschool. So when the when the
Obama administration came intopower back in 2008 one of the
things that they changed withthe lunch school program, and he
was supposed to be healthier andall this kind of stuff. And,
and, you know, I didn't thinktoo much of it. I guess I'm too

(01:07:32):
much of a Republican for thatmatter, and, and so I didn't
really think too much about it.And my kids came home and they
were saying, Oh, the cook'shomemade ranch dressing is they
won't let her make it anymore atthe school, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, you get they have tobuy this ranch dressing that
tastes like crap. You know,that's terrifying. And so, you

(01:07:55):
know, when I was in school, thecooks made all the soups, the
cooks made all the bread. Thecooks were cooks. They weren't
just food warmers. Now, all theyare is a Food Warmer. And and my
daughter come now, my because ofeconomic conditions, her and her

(01:08:17):
husband live with us right nowtemporarily, and my daughter's
all the time making homemadebread and and all this kind of
stuff. Homemade cinnamon rolls.I remember his kid, we'd get
cinnamon rolls the school thatthe cook would make. I mean,
great stuff. You know, all of itwas probably better for you than
all this processed food that thekids are getting in the school
system today.
So just even though thepreservatives alone, you know.

(01:08:41):
So
I think if parents want ahealthier program, they need to
be going to their their schools,demanding that the launch
program, where you reworked atthe federal level, they need to
be going to their senators andrepresentatives and said at the
federal level, and saying yoursenators and representatives go
to them when they have a meetingand say, I want the school lunch

(01:09:02):
program reworked, because thatis not the food that I ate. You
know, they talk about diabetesand all this stuff and kids,
well, they ever think it couldbe coming partially from the
school for what they're havingto put down those kids, provide
those kids? My
kids won't eat the school I livein Idaho, and we're a very
conservative state, and ourlunch programs, here are some of
the worst in the nation. Um,there's no scratch, I mean, very

(01:09:25):
little scratch cooking thathappens. It's just heat and
serve. And it's getting worse bythe year. Like back before 2020
there was a lot more fresh prep,prep cooking happening. And it's
like gotten worse and worse. So,and it's a state, it's a blend
of state and federal oversight,I've really taken a deep dive
into school lunch programs inthe last few years. And it's

(01:09:45):
it's interesting because, like,California passed an initiative
where they're pumping a bunch ofmoney into reinstating actual
fresh commissary. And so all thepeople who are doing food, you
know, work like. Like me andsactis are really focused on
California markets right nowbecause they're actually willing
to pay for higher quality foodfor school lunch programs, but

(01:10:08):
states like Idaho still won'ttouch it. So it's there's a lot
of state regulation there toothat we need to really get
focused on. Because if I were incharge, not only would it be
fresh, basic, scratch cookedfood, but we'd have kids in
there learning to cook andserving their their fellow
students, and learning to bepart of the food system, not

(01:10:29):
just showing up and getting atray and walking away with it,
but actually being through theprocess from, you know, in the
school garden to doing breadmaking days for the third
graders, like they could totallydo that, and they would be so
proud of it. And there's whatthey could do that doesn't
involve a sharp knife or a hotburner. There's so much cool
hands on stuff that they coulddo. And it's just a shame that

(01:10:51):
we've lost the nation
bring back. I totally, I totallyagree with that. Yeah, parents,
parents need to be aware of whattheir kids are eating at school.
It's not all healthy for them.
Oh no. It's total garbage. Mykids won't eat it. Sometimes
they take pictures of it andtext it to me, and they're like,
you're not going to believe thismom on that note, but Keith, I

(01:11:12):
do have to wrap it up. Andspeaking of the kids, they are
wanting to come down the stairspretty soon, and they know that
mom will be very upset with themif they come down the stairs
while I'm recording a podcast.So since my studio is in the
living room, which is alwayskind of a funny deal, but for
those of you who are listening,I'm really glad you joined us.
This is probably the longestpodcast we've ever recorded on

(01:11:33):
the regenerative by designpodcast show, but this is
fantastic. This again, yeah,I've been wanting to have Keith
on here for years. So ThanksKeith for joining me, and I knew
we'd have a lot to unpack,because you're a really great
thought leader in our regionwhen it comes to this model and
really making those impacts tofood at the field level and at

(01:11:54):
the soil level. So thanks forall you do, and we're if people
want to reach out to you andharass you, or say they want to
reach out and ask you a questionor whatever. How can they reach
you? Where's the best place
contact you? Contact me, andI'll
hook them up. Yeah, okay. Well,if I have your permission, and
somebody's like, hey, how do Iget in touch with Keith mortar,

(01:12:16):
I will make sure they've gotyour information. Yeah, yes.
Well, cool. And, you know,
I don't have a natural farmers.Yeah, you guys are pretty
low profile, you know, for folkswho are on the Inland Northwest
too, if they want to learn moreabout this, you know, Keith is
the president of the PacificNorthwest direct Seed
Association. And you guys havereally great conferences that

(01:12:39):
I'm not a farmer, and I've goneto it before and gotten a lot of
really cool information justabout how agriculture works and
why what you guys are doing isdifferent than just regular,
conventional systems. And so youguys have a great conference in
January. So for people who areinterested, um, we'll put a link
to the Pacific Northwest YorkSeed Association website so

(01:13:00):
people can follow. I just
want to explain that a littlebit Johnny before we get off the
air here. Yeah, that conferencein the winter time is kind of
split between regenerative guysand conventional guys, so there
is a little bit of both sides.So if you do come, you know,
look at the schedule, see whatyou want to attend for a
meeting. And then we haveanother conference coming up in
June that's strictly about soilhealth, yeah. So, so we do have

(01:13:24):
two conferences a year that wedo put on. Thank you
for clarifying that they're bothgreat. Um, the summer one is
fantastic. Um, I was reallylucky to attend.
For those people who have nevertried Johnny's brownies from
snack to this, they're the kidswill love them, and they're
healthy, yeah,
sugar, so I wouldn't call themhealthy, but you know, at least

(01:13:46):
it's good quality grains, and,you know, we don't add any
garbage and all, it's allregenerative, organic sugar. So
you are getting some sugar, butit's really high quality. So
thanks for the plug there, Keithand um, thank
you again. We take them to ourchurch. So that's the first
thing that's gone. Oh, nice.
You've got, you've got thecongregation trained. I love it.
Yeah, exactly. Well, so muchfun. Thanks again, and we'll for

(01:14:10):
those listeners out there, ifyou love this podcast, please
take a minute to share, rate iton Apple podcasting, and just
make sure you're talking aboutthe future that we could have.
So on that note, have a greatday, and thanks for joining
this episode of the regenerativeby design podcast is brought to
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(01:14:31):
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You.