The Farm Robots Changing the Food System....For the Better!

What if the health of a LOT of soil could get a LOT healthier......pretty quickly???  What would that do to the health and flavor of our whole food system?  What would it do to help combat climate change?   This soil health revolution might be closer than you think.

----

We’ve talked about the important role that no-till farming plays in creating healthier soil…..and the fact that this is a challenge for organic as well as conventional farming systems……….since both of them rely on tilling up the land to control weeds ahead of planting. 

With the help of some amazing robots that mechanically can cut the weeds in-between the crop rows on the farm, regenerative agriculture at scale is on the horizon.

This amazing breakthrough was created by Greenfield Robotics…..a company located in Cheney, KS and co-founded by my good friend, Clint Brauer, who is also the CEO.

In this week’s episode – we will hear more from Clint both about how his robots are about to bring forth a regenerative agricultural revolution…..and how he is applying regenerative principles in on his own farm……and as part of building a regenerative supply chain for a top pet food company.

In my discussion with Clint, we also talk about the flavor differences that come from growing vegetables in many different mediums.....and how the flavor of food can have some surprising connections to health of the soil.

About Our Show:

Our show gives conscious consumers like you –  a deeper understanding of what it takes to create healthy soil – and the link that soil health has to both the flavor and health of your food.

Go Further!

Follow and Support our guest: Clint Brauer & Greenfield Robotics on the following sites:

Watch the robots go!  https://vimeo.com/742388439

Greenfield Robotics website:  https://www.greenfieldincorporated.com/

Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/greenfieldrobotics/ 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/greenfieldrobotics

Support the show

Brought to you by the Global Food and Farm Online Community

Click here to subscribe on your favorite platform or click here to listen on our website.

Support the show through Patreon -- Patreon.com/TastingTerroir

Transcript

Clint Brauer: 0:00

We're going to make food honest, all of it, either directly or through everyone else suddenly being pressured to account what they're doing because of the capabilities we're unleashing now. And so if a consumer wants their food to start with being honest, meaning chemicals and how it was raised, then I think that's step one, actually flavor. I agree with you. That's why people buy things, but they also buy them for help. And so you've got to have both. And there's no reason those two things work together, actually, right as we're discussing. But that really is Greenfield's working towards being a consumer brand now, and we think the biggest following in the world sitting there waiting for us, because I don't think anyone could trust the food right now.

Sara Harper: 0:57

Welcome back to our podcast Tasting Terrari, a series of conversations that introduce you to people that are making food healthier and possibly more flavorful for you and easier on the planet. I'm your host, Sarah Harper. That clip was from an interview I did with another one of my favorite people, clint Brower, a farmer in Cheney, Kansas, and co founder and CEO of Greenfield Robotics, a company that makes robots that kill weeds without tillage or chemicals. He is also helping to build a regenerative supply chain of farmers for a top pet food company. More from Clint on this and several other topics in a few minutes. As part of our feature interview this week, in our discussion last week with California farmer Derek Azavito, we explore the challenges, trade offs and pressures inside the, quote, messy middle of our food system, the part that connects the farmer all the way to the end consumer. Specifically, I found some of Derek's insights on how the processing system prevents some of the most flavorful foods from getting to the grocery store and why the food system is so slow to change to be very interesting and valuable for consumers like you. Derek's insights really highlight why it is so important for consumers to buy directly from regenerative or soil health conscious farmers when possible. And luckily, that is becoming more possible every day. As you may have already noticed, most of the folks we are interviewing on this podcast are farmers that are investing in the ability to cut through that messy metal and bring you healthier, more flavorful ingredients than food. As more of these opportunities emerge for farmers to find their market directly, an even greater focus will be put on the practices that they use and the outcomes that they are able to achieve. This week, we will be looking at some new technology that has the potential to scale up the benefits of regenerative agriculture, the soil health building way of farming in a very big way. We've talked about the important role that no till farming plays in creating healthier soil and the fact that this is a challenge for the organic as well as the conventional farming systems, since both of them rely on tilling up the land in order to control weeds ahead of planting. What if organic or conventional farmers could plant crops without tilling and without using chemicals? And what if they could do it at a scale that could bring prices down for consumers? Well, they might soon be able to do that with the help of some amazing robots that mechanically cut the weeds in between the crop rows. This amazing breakthrough was created by Greenfield Robotics, a company located in Cheney, Kansas, co founded by my good friend Clint Brower. Clint is one of those guys who seems to have endless energy and a passion for using it to make the world around him a better place. With a background in farming, technology, marketing, and many other things, clint has emerged as a force for good in changing the food system. Clint has actually three fulltime jobs, and I'm not even kidding, he's making big leaps forward in all of them. In this week's episode, we will hear more from Clint both about how his robots are about to bring forth a regenerative agricultural revolution and how he is applying regenerative principles on his own farm as part of building a regenerative supply chain for a top pet food company. We start off our conversation with Clint by exploring his definition of regenerative agriculture, a mindset and a set of principles that results in restoring soil health. As we've discussed in other episodes, we'll get to hear from him how he applies this mindset on his own farm and how the robots he's building up apply it elsewhere. Here's my interview with Clint Brower. Hi, Clint. How are you?

Clint Brauer: 4:54

Hey, Sarah. I'm good.

Sara Harper: 4:56

Good. So, first of all, share with everybody your name and where you're at and what you're doing, what you're working on.

Clint Brauer: 5:03

Basically working on eliminating chemicals at agriculture. And we're doing that three ways. One, my farm. Two, we have a regenerative supply chain with Canada Pet Foods. And three, I have a robotics company that actually is an enabler to get chemicals out of regenerative AG. So those are three things we're doing here in Kansas.

Sara Harper: 5:21

We're talking with folks to try to help them understand regenerative agriculture because the term is used in a lot of different ways. And we are super lucky to get to work with people like you in our community that are doing a lot of great regenerative principles. To start off, how do you define regenerative agriculture?

Clint Brauer: 5:37

I'm going to define it for about 250,000,000 acres in the United States alone. And so for that, it basically means this. One, you do a crop rotation. Two, you don't till you're no till. Three, essentially you use cover crops when you're not growing your cash crops, right? So when you're not growing something all the way to seed and you're just growing a multi species preferably version of something, you're not going to collect for seed. And the whole point of that is to help your soil. And then the last stage of that, once you have those cover crops growing, whether it's winter or summer, you want to graze those with ruminants. And ruminants is a fancy word for sheep or cattle. Basically, crazy people have goats.

Sara Harper: 6:20

How did you kind of come to learning about and embracing regenerative agriculture and what it is to you?

Clint Brauer: 6:26

Yes, it's interesting. I set out in 2010, 2011, to start trying to get chemicals out of farming. And so I did greenhouses and all this stuff and distributed into grocery stores and restaurants and direct to people's doorsteps and actually to corporations. And I figured out that, oh, gosh, this isn't going to scale very well. And to eliminate this and talk to a friend of mine and he said, look, you need to get a note and if you can figure out how to get the chemicals out, then this solves a ton of problems. And so that's sort of led me down the path towards your generative. And I was pursuing something I called integrated agriculture. And then one day somebody said, hey, you know, there's something similar to what you're already trying to do that someone's already kind of blaze's trail except using chemicals. But that's how it came about.

Sara Harper: 7:10

And how is it that you're practicing regenerative in your three different businesses?

Clint Brauer: 7:15

Yeah, on the farm, I believe next year, we'll have up to an eight season crop rotation now wow. Which is virtually unheard of here. Yeah, that's step one. And that breaks a lot of insect cycles and stuff like that. So I'm excited about that. That's a far cry from when this farm was weed only. Yeah, so that's one. And so the second thing is. And sometimes I don't get things done on time because of the robotics company. But we're trying to make sure that we have covered crops planted as quickly as possible after each harvest or using robots before harvest. Getting to that point. Probably this year. And basically get those cover crops always growing and multi species is most of what I do. Unless we're doing a test on a single species for the robots. And the third is we graze. And so I don't have enough animals to graze all the stuff yet because we're still prototyping the thing that grazes that. But the idea is that we graze every acre once a year, meaning rotationally graze. It half the year cash crop, roughly half the other year. So that's what we're doing on my farm.

Sara Harper: 8:20

That's great. And what about with Greenfield robotics?

Clint Brauer: 8:23

Yeah, Greenfield basically is the enabler to. Make this go easier. So our first robot, we have, course, a bunch of customers and then on my farm, so post Plan and Milo that I grow or if I was growing corn or cotton, but if I did, this eliminates a lot of the herbicides and soybeans, obviously, because your robots kill the weeds. They kill the weeds between the rows mechanically, right? Mechanically, nothing could start up higher in a no till environment.

Sara Harper: 8:52

Not good. Yeah, that's right.

Clint Brauer: 8:57

Yeah. I mean, those things work well for a specialty crop. And those folks that do that, it's impressive as hell, but it just won't.

Sara Harper: 9:04

Right.

Clint Brauer: 9:05

Next spot gets rid of all the herbicides. So it starts before you plant and all the way through. We're in year three. You're testing that. And the multiverseion of that will be coming yeah. Soon.

Sara Harper: 9:15

That's awesome, because something like well, exactly what you've created is the key to really scaling up the ability to have both no till and no chemical, because a lot of people would like that.

Clint Brauer: 9:28

And cover cropping.

Sara Harper: 9:29

And cover cropping.

Clint Brauer: 9:30

Right now, terminating a multi species cover crop is actually not always easy with chemicals, and certainly without chemicals is impossible. Things like Harry bets very hard. They can come back and attack your crop before your crop is done. So the thing we're developing actually would incent you to do a multi species cover crop because it takes care of anything.

Sara Harper: 9:51

And then in Canada and the supply. Chain that you're building, that's another way. That you're bringing regenerative forward, creating a. Market for farmers that are wanting to farm this way.

Clint Brauer: 10:02

Yeah, look, we're fortunate enough to do a test in 2015, and the Team Canada bought into this, and we started creating a supply chain back then. And it's a different team now than it was back then because people change a company, but they stuck with it.

Sara Harper: 10:19

All.

Clint Brauer: 10:20

It's pretty cool. Yeah, that's right. It was a shock, actually. And we stuck with it, and it's growing.

Sara Harper: 10:25

And they're a pet food company.

Clint Brauer: 10:27

They're a pet food company.

Sara Harper: 10:31

That's great. Our pets deserve regenerative food, certainly, but so do people.

Clint Brauer: 10:40

Look, I mean, they're humans, too, and their company kind of rallies around doing good things. And so not just pet food, but doing it right and doing it well. And they do things that beyond the regenerative supply chain. They're pretty darn cool. So I give them a lot of credit. They're very thoughtful group of folks, and I've enjoyed working with them, honestly. And so it's cool that we're in the tens of millions of pounds shipping now.

Sara Harper: 11:03

That's great.

Clint Brauer: 11:04

Yeah. I think it's a pretty good example for folks. And if they lacked imagination, they can just look to what we're doing and go, oh, wow, this guy and the pet food company are making this work. It's not all of their ingredients. It's not there, but we're making progress, like, every year, wrapping it up.

Sara Harper: 11:21

If you had to summarize regenerative agriculture. How would you complete the sentence?

Clint Brauer: 11:27

Regenerative agriculture is it work in progress? I think that it needs much more widespread adoption, and I have some ideas on how we can bring that into being. But regenerative aging solve two major problems. One is carbon. And if we don't get this and look, we raise venture capital, we talk to investors all the time and I see the things that people are trying to get rid of carbon with and they're not going to work, not in time. And farmers will change much faster than corporate middle managers, I'll be honest. But we still need to create the incentives and have the tool set to make it work and scale. Right. I think that is really the big challenge right now is making it scale and scale quickly in time to defeat this carbon problem.

Sara Harper: 12:20

And along with it, a lot of. Nutrition challenges with getting more nutrient density into food. You're right.

Clint Brauer: 12:29

And then I think the last piece of that of course, is chemicals. If you scale it all and still people are getting Parkinson's all over the place, you haven't really achieved a lot.

Sara Harper: 12:37

Clint, we've talked about regenerative agriculture and what is regenerative and how you're applying it and that's really helpful for people. But I think a lot of people still are looking at the things that they experience, which are flavor and taste and then of course the health of food. And so you've had some interesting experiences, not just as a commercial farmer, but you are, and as an inventor of robots that help reduce chemicals and tillage and all that, which you are too. But also just as somebody who's grown. Your own food and tasted it yourself and had different experiences and different types of growing systems. So maybe let's start with just sharing a little bit of your experience on that, those different systems and the difference you saw in taste.

Clint Brauer: 13:21

Yeah, I've grown food in a bunch of different ways or ingredients or whatever you want to call them and actually started out of course I grew up with the garden and all that kind of stuff, but let's just start since I got back from California about twelve years ago and I actually started growing without chemicals, vegetables outdoors, right? So I grew 100 plus types of vegetables for CSA that I started and then ended up building two greenhouses that we grew in the soil. And then my cousin and I together started something that was a hydroponic facility as well. And so we distributed into all these grocery stores, all the whole dudes and all the high bees in Kansas City at one point with that and grew a lot of the same things in the hydroponic facility as far as greens go. And then of course the last thing is we grow of course now my farm is mostly growing regenerative. We're headed doing our best regenerative. So we grow sheep by grazing them on our cropland, grass fed sheep. And then of course we grow grains, wheat, sorghum, barley, soybeans, so on and so forth. We seem to be heading more and more towards specialty on that front as well, but we're not there yet.

Sara Harper: 14:43

And did you notice the difference in flavor between the hydroponic and the stuff grown in the soil.

Clint Brauer: 14:48

Yeah. World difference. It was really interesting. And there is one crop, by the way, that I highly recommend you buy Hydroponic, and that is arugula.

Sara Harper: 15:00

Oh, really?

Clint Brauer: 15:01

Good luck. Growing hydroponic is amazing. It's got just the right amount of bitterness if they didn't let it grow too long or if it's not the third growth. And we sold that very well in a clamshell. And when I had, people would walk up to so I spent 30 some weekends in grocery stores wow. Years ago, before I robotics and talking to people, talking to thousands in grocery store. And it was interesting demoing, like, oh, I don't like a rubber. You need to try. And they would and they would buy most of the time. Whereas if it was ruga that I grew on the ground outdoors or in a greenhouse, which we sold us houses and stuff, there no way. Right. It was peppery. It was could be better to this kind of thing. But the hydroponic arugula is fantastic. Other than that, most things grown in the soil have a better flavor, in my opinion. And I'm sure there's other exceptions as well. Really what I started out doing is growing a lot of different tomatoes. I've grown a lot of different tomatoes. And that was starting in 2010, I've grown, I mean, so many different varieties. That was interesting. Clear about growing heirlooms was my focus, and most people just had no idea the difference. And of course, in this region, which wasn't normalized, even out in California at that time, people would be like, why do your tomatoes look so weird? Right? They couldn't sell. I think everyone kind of knows that now, but it was really a hard sell. Right. They'd like, reach for the big red ones, and you'd be like, well, these over here are actually a lot better. I think Jill has talked about this on some of the presentations to your seed selection, of course, has a lot to say as well. But we could grow those tomatoes on we have a field ground farm at two acre field. And my dad always just didn't know what to do with, so he just put basically weed in it every year and tilted every year and would add synthetics just like the rest of the farm was back then. Write adjacent to it. Literally, you just step over a fence and a soil that had never been tilled, that had historically, it had been quite a while, but it had everything from horses, pigs, cattle, you name it. And they could go on the barn, those two pieces of soil right next to each other. I had them soil tested my first or second year. The first one with all the synthetics had a PH of about five. Five?

Sara Harper: 17:33

Wow.

Clint Brauer: 17:33

And all the nutrients, magnesium, stuff like that was really long. The other one had a soil PH of, I believe, 6.3 or 6.7 maybe even, and just loaded with nutrients right next to each other. What was the difference? Right, yeah. Very interesting. So we would grow tomatoes on both of those and it was interesting. Of course, you get a lot more yield. You have healthier looking plants on the other, you don't even have to add fertilizer. There's nothing to do there. Right. Literally at that point, just plant the things and go and keep it weed relatively well. And then you grow those tomatoes and just a world of different terms of yield. The only thing I will say that will kind of cut against the grain of what you talk about here just a little bit is this. I found that sometimes the tomatoes, when they were super stressed, were the best tasting, and believe me, on that 5.5 PH running. Of course, tomatoes are acidic. They like acidic soil to some extent, anyway. And in the stress of the summers, you wouldn't get many, but what you had were amazing.

Sara Harper: 18:42

So they were better in the less healthy time. Sugar.

Clint Brauer: 18:46

Better in terms of sugar.

Sara Harper: 18:50

Have I not instructed you? No, it isn't really.

Clint Brauer: 18:55

And it was just sugar, right?

Sara Harper: 18:56

Yeah.

Clint Brauer: 18:57

By the way, anybody's raising tomatoes, you want to pick your tomatoes within 30 minutes to an hour of the sun coming up. That's when you have the highest sugar content.

Sara Harper: 19:04

Oh, interesting.

Clint Brauer: 19:05

In the summers, when it starts raising, the temperatures raised, the plant takes back some of it. That's what I was taught. And you could, if you pull off the same planet at nine in the morning or eight in the morning versus two in the afternoon, world of difference. Same exact.

Sara Harper: 19:18

So interesting. Yes. Well, no, it's a very good point, because I think that's the tendency, and I certainly am human, I can fall into it, too. We all have narratives and things that we think makes sense and want to be true, and then we try to just push everything into that. And so I really don't want it to be that. It is an open question as to what's the impact of healthier soil on flavor. Certainly on health, we'll know that flavor is something that changes, like people's taste changes depending on what they eat. And if you eat more sugar, then you need more sugar to taste something sweet. If you eat less sugar, then the fruit tastes very sweet. So it's all a very kind of squishy area. It's not nailed down. Right, exactly. And that's the time, I think, to explore those questions, especially with people that know something about, well.

Clint Brauer: 20:19

I guess our texture. Look, I mean, I grassfed, but I also have a farmer that grows their four page calf that is hand fed grain that I get to split every year. It's the only one in existence and it's grain fed and it is marble. So I raised grass fed lamb, which I love, and I'll eat grass fed beef, which I love, and it has different flavors. But I'll also eat that awesome grain fed beef.

Sara Harper: 20:46

Well, that's the other thing. I think it's about what we do most often. It's not about the treat. It's not about never having something that just tastes really good but isn't good for you. It's about do you have that every day? And I have a sweet tooth. I'm battling. So I understand the struggle is real, but I am interested in we've already talked about what you're able to do with regenerative agriculture on your farm, but your robots and what they're able to empower. I think they're on the verge of empowering this whole ability to taste a place, whether or not the taste is right off the bat preferred. But I know that different varieties matter. But then also I've learned from Jill, of course, these microbiomes are amazing and they're different. They're very different from place to place. And so it makes sense, just kind of logically, that if you have a system empowered by something like your robots, so you're able to do no till and no chemical, very hard to do on a commercial scale without something like your robots dealing with the weeds, that that system can empower the ability to have more of the nutrients coming in naturally as opposed to artificially. And therefore nutrients affect taste, minerals affect taste. And so I'm super excited to kind of do a taste test within our network of North Dakota wheat and Kansas wheat. I know from a lot of people that bread can be kind of like a wine in terms of being able to taste different notes of this and that, and especially when it's done with whole grain and really, you're really putting the wheat forward as opposed to the other stuff. So I don't know. What are you thinking about? I know you focused a lot on climate change and the ability to get chemicals out of the system for health. Have you thought about flavor and the impact that your system could maybe have on that, too?

Clint Brauer: 22:49

Well, first off, if we go back to the tomatoes that were growing in the 5.4, whatever it was, 5.355 PH, really low. They weren't yielding with food and there was nothing resilient about that. Right. And the ones in the better soil were doing better. Of course. Just to take one more extreme case on that, when I went to Whole Foods, I took my heirlooms from the field and said, have you tasted any sweeter? And the guy said yes, which shocked me. He ran the Rocky Mountain region for Whole Foods. This is my first meeting, do tell. And he said, these guys grow tomatoes in dry creek beds in California and they're so stressed, but they get only a few tomatoes. They're like eleven or twelve pound wholesale.

Sara Harper: 23:35

Oh, wow.

Clint Brauer: 23:36

You know who buys those?

Sara Harper: 23:37

But.

Clint Brauer: 23:41

When I talk about that, those are extreme things. How do you get healthy nutritional and then be able to differentiate based on climate and soil. And so with our robots, what we're seeking to do now is the little one that we've made so far that folks have seen does a pretty basic thing and eliminates some of the herbicides toast plant without tillage.

Sara Harper: 24:04

Right.

Clint Brauer: 24:04

So if you're an organic farmer, most of the time you're cultivating almost always you're cultivating at some point at any scale, at a large scale, which is mostly what shows up in grocery stores, right?

Sara Harper: 24:20

Right.

Clint Brauer: 24:21

So we solve that problem. We help with it. Let's put it that way. The next one that's coming out that we've been testing for three years now eliminates any need for tillage, period, and any need for any chemical burn down or herbicides period. And we proved it this spring in early summer, and we have it documented. So we'll have a prototype of that running next year in my fields, and it works with cover crops. Everything we do at Greenfield is made to work with regenerative bag or you're asking or you're cultivating. We're just not going to work with you. This is not where we're at. And my belief is everyone's going our direction anyway. And so that's kind of the way we're doing it. And the reason we do it, one, get rid of chemicals to keep the carbon in the ground. And the reason you keep the carbon in the ground, I believe, is what we're talking about here, which is the soil microbial activity when you keep those roots down there and you get them to react and help you grow the plants you have and the future plants and keeping that going. And so with our robots, when you spray herbicides, there is an impact on that microbial community. Even if you don't tilt, that will help improve sort of the vibrancy and the different variations. You have fungi and bacteria underground just by that alone.

Sara Harper: 25:46

With the organic system, too, because a lot of people think that organic means no chemical. It means no synthetic chemical. You can use natural things, potassium, chloride, synthetic. Right, right. So, I mean, your system can help both. Obviously, what I'm excited about in terms of the flavored piece of it, which is the least well known, but that's often where people first are thinking, sure, there are a number of people that are very focused on health, but there are even more people, I would say, that are focused on that it tastes good, and that's not a bad thing. Of course, that makes sense.

Clint Brauer: 26:26

But it's kind of like white bread tastes super good.

Sara Harper: 26:29

Right, I know.

Clint Brauer: 26:32

So until you sort of learn how there's more complexity right. It gets back to the tomatoes. There is ever beyond sweetness.

Sara Harper: 26:40

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing about the subtle differences between this North Dakota or Kansas week. Those are going to be completely papered over. If the primary thing that you're tasting is sweet, that just overloads everything else. And also all that great nutrition and flavor and texture. And all of that is going to be gone if it's milled into a white powder that turns right into sugars as soon as you eat it. So there's all these different pieces that come together to give us maybe this rich, artisanal food system that we had a long time ago because we just didn't have as much processing ability. And certainly with that has come shelf stability and all that. But I have been finding an interesting theme, too, and talking with Derek Azavito last week about the processing stuff. And processing has given us shelf life, but it's taken away so much to get that back. We have to change our habits, too. We have to be willing to buy food maybe more often and not expect it to last for a month.

Clint Brauer: 27:52

I mean, shelf life, if you think about it, everything was based about round refrigeration. So you have to consolidate. And so now you've got people going for refrigerated and now you bring all the things and you need shelf life and that's how you make money. I'm not sure those distribution mechanisms need to exist in their current form for very much longer. We are much more efficient now moving things right to your doorstep. And so that'll be interesting. But yeah, getting back to the topic at hand here, though. So we grow. Sorghum we grow for pet food. Actually, pets are pretty well off, robots and all the pet food. We're doing a human food trial right now, so we'll find out if that works in about a week with a different type of sore. Dash, exciting. We're launching a Barley program around here. We haven't decided it's old or holist or which variety or any of those, but I think there's a lot of variation to come. If you think about, like, when you were a kid, the type of things you eat versus now that subtlety, you much more appreciate. Right? I mean, think about the first time. I don't know how you grew up, but I grew up eating a lot of times, iceberg lettuce, right? Which, by the way, still has its place. But then the first time you buy it into Bib, a real Romaine that's grown, this is a different deal.

Sara Harper: 29:14

Yes, as you have been going through all of this at the expert level, but as a consumer, how do you see these changes making their way out to the consumer? And how is the consumer empowered to speed up the kind of thing, the system that they want?

Clint Brauer: 29:30

Well, here goes my pitch. I'd like to see consumers follow what we're doing at Greenfield. I'll tell you why. Because we're going to make food honest, either directly or through everyone else suddenly being pressured to account what they're doing because of the capabilities we're unleashing. Now, if a consumer wants their food to start with being honest, meeting chemicals and how it was raised, then I think. That's step one, actually flavor. I agree with you. That's why people buy things, but they also buy them for help, right? And so you've got to have both. There's no reason that those two things work together, actually, right, as we're discussing. But that really is greenfield is working towards being a consumer, brand new and we think the biggest following in the world sitting there waiting for us because I don't think anyone can trust their food right now at the shelter.

Sara Harper: 30:23

Yeah, absolutely. I think the marketing just around regenerative. I mean, it's not just regenerative. It's every aspect you can imagine. And it's not just food. You've been in a lot of different industries. You know how it is out there. But I think there is the last two generations being digital natives, they've grown up with all of this stuff around them all the time, and they've gotten very skeptical about the glossy looking ad or the beautiful looking farm or the stuff that does appeal to what you wish it would be. But knowing that just because you have a beautiful marketing doesn't mean that their product is what they say it is or that it's selling. And so this ability now to track things, I mean, my gosh, my husband loses his keys, so I put a little tracker thingy on it and you can find it on your phone, wherever it is. I mean, now our ability to track things in our everyday lives is so great that we're used to that concept and we kind of expect more access to it. And like, what you're doing is not just honest but traceable all the way through in a way that hasn't been as available in the past. And maybe you could talk more about that because it's not just the work you do. You work with other farmers and other partners to kind of build these supply chains that you're working on. Right?

Clint Brauer: 31:44

It's interesting, right? So the challenge with all these things is what facilities are in place. You can grow the crops, that's not a problem. You can source the seed, you can grow the crop, you can do it the right way. But what happens after that is always the challenge, right? And so how do you separate and delineate your supply chains with pet food, with candidate that we've been doing? How do you make sure that the stuff that's grown, regenerative, you're aware of and tested properly for toxins and distributed properly and make sure it's safe first and foremost. And then the other thing is, over time, how do you differentiate that in storage? And a lot of times it's as simple as seed storage, scheduling in your plant, what you're making, anything like that. And I think that's the real challenge out there is how do you go from this to that? Because you can't just drop all that, right? Because this is what people are buying today.

Sara Harper: 32:46

Right.

Clint Brauer: 32:47

And if you're a new brand and you don't have that legacy stuff, who's going to do all that post harvest processing, storage and distribution for you? And that's really the fundamental challenge. So in my opinion, that exists. I guess I'm looking at, from a greenfield perspective, we can raise any crop we want now. It's just a matter of months now without chemicals. Right. But how do you carry that through to consumer in a way that's cost efficient enough, right. I have a loaf of bread in my possession right now that costs $13 to my house. Got two of them. And I know the guy started it and we're meeting next week, but it's I'm sure he's smart enough to know $13 loaf bread has extremely limited audience. I would imagine it got to 13 a loaf. We'll find out when I meet with them. But because of all the handling costs, all the things that they've had to do to get to this point right. And wanting to not lose money hand over fist on it in the interim and sort of proof of concept. So that really it's an interesting thing because actually billing facilities and all that is one of the easier things to capitalize than taking all the risk on the crop front. Right. But it doesn't exist yet.

Sara Harper: 34:11

That's the theme, too, that's come up throughout our show and obviously our community. The accidents have had to build a mill to mill their flour to get it to market. Jennifer COHR in Ohio has had to add a rice mill to Miller. The rice that she's getting from Adam Chapel regeneratively grown to get it out to market because people weren't willing to do it for them. The infrastructure didn't want it. They didn't want to change it and want to specialize. And same with Deanna Levinsky in North Dakota. And you guys are having like there's this real theme of in order to get this better product out, the farmers or partners of the farmers are having to build the processing and the distribution, which is incredibly expensive and risky. And that was part of Derek said last time, too. That's why it's so important for consumers to zero in on these brands that are making it possible and bringing it to them in a form that they can use, because they hear all the time, and I hear all the time, and I'm sure you do. It's so maddening. If only more farmers would change the way they grow. And certainly there's room for improvement. There certainly. But more farmers would change very quickly if there were a processing system. They can reward what they're doing. So the fact that all of these great people, they're fantastic people have to take on this additional role of becoming a mill owner and operator, it's inspiring, but it's incredibly frustrating to me, too.

Clint Brauer: 35:53

Yeah, I think so. And it's a lot of risk for a farmer to take. It's amazing what those guys are doing by the way.

Sara Harper: 36:00

Well, you too. And that's to your point about the call to consumers to follow along on these brands to understand the difference. There's a massive difference between a small startup brand or entrepreneur brand that has a good idea, has a good recipe, has a better cookie or whatever. There's a huge difference between that and a farmer generated brand that has taken on the added risk of milling their own ingredient, because now they can know from the very beginning of that seed all the way through to the ingredient, what's been done and how it's been managed and the care that goes into it. They are the real version of the beautiful Sunrise video clip. But how do they tell? How do they get through the marketing? We have marketing background.

Clint Brauer: 36:44

You understand that my belief is Greenfield, when people, when we really start marketing, which we just have started, if you have an outcry, is people gravitate to robots because we, for some reason, think technology is the greatest thing ever.

Sara Harper: 36:59

Absolutely. They're very cool.

Clint Brauer: 37:01

Personally, I think it's pretty cool with Derek. And yes, of course, that's what culture we like new, shiny things. Right. And so, believe me, when we release the next robot, it's about as shiny cool as it gets. And I think there's this massive light in demand, just like Tesla and cork for electric vehicles. I lived in La. It was around enough people knowing it was a constant conversation about electric cars not existing because the incumbents couldn't figure out how to do it. They didn't want to. They didn't have the wherewithal it didn't make any sense for them. So along comes Elon Musk, who basically lays it all on the line, gets it done, and now everyone's racing to follow him. But remember, no one knew who that dude was 1112 years ago.

Sara Harper: 37:46

Right, yeah, that's a very good point.

Clint Brauer: 37:48

Outside of Silicon Valley, nobody knew. I taught an entrepreneurship class. Not one kid in that room knew back then. Everyone knows. Right. And my point is, he tapped latent demand for electric vehicles. What we're doing in Greenville is tapping latent demand for chemical free, absolutely transparent food. So that's where we're going. And if you look at the number of followers, tesla's versus General Motors, why would you follow General Motors? I think that all these things we're doing, Sarah, and what you're doing here, what Diana is doing, what Derek is doing, what Jennifer is doing, what Jill is doing, it's inevitable. Co founder of Greenfield, Carl, he's just an advisor now, but he used to say to me, clint, what we're doing is inevitable. Because it is.

Sara Harper: 38:38

Yeah.

Clint Brauer: 38:38

And so anyone who wants to doubt it, I'll put them in the same category of all the people I've been dealing with for 25 years that basically said, yeah, and then they doubt, and then they say, you're tilting at windmills, and then, of course, you run. And so, of course, they don't call you up, by the way. It's just a matter of time because of what you're doing this for. The flavor is truly unique, and it's different. It's healthier for you. Even if the herbicides are in, it's still better for you than without. Right. You get better nutrients and it's just better, period. And of course, there will always probably be a place for Wonder Bread.

Sara Harper: 39:19

Of course, yeah.

Clint Brauer: 39:21

Always going to be there. If you study grain milling history a little bit, that was a big thing wealthy people wanted. And I haven't went and charted the timelines, but wealthy people back when they came out of white milling, I think that's probably when you saw the paintings, they all start getting really fast, looking unhealthy. That's a good I don't know, but I'm not discharging Wonder Bread at all. I ate as a kid. But I just think what we're looking at here is you should have all these choices, and they should be honest. You should know where you're going to buy. I'll eat a hot dog once in a while.

Sara Harper: 39:57

Yeah, exactly.

Clint Brauer: 40:01

The point is not to drink it all the time.

Sara Harper: 40:03

Yes.

Clint Brauer: 40:05

And try other things that are healthier. For me, that's all we're trying to bring into existence is you have options. You can trust your options. If you want to make bad choices, that's up to you.

Sara Harper: 40:14

Yeah. And I think that because I've seen a lot of consumer research for five years or more that just always talks about the strong desire that consumers have for particularly. Again. This younger generation. They've lost a lot of faith in institutions. Which I don't know why. So they shifted more toward. Well. I can make smaller change. But real change in how I purchase things and what I buy. And so that's part of what drives this desire to know who's doing what, and that's a noble thing. So to be able to put real metrics and real authenticity to that, that's what I am so excited about. And I think your robots are going to empower that for not just the supply to your building, but for all the people that use those robots, because then they can create those systems and bring that cost down and add those values into their supply chains, too.

Clint Brauer: 41:16

Well, I think let's talk about the other side of this. We're in the worst route in the history of where I'm at right now. I haven't planted any fall crops, simply no moisture, even though I've been regenerative from no till for four or five years, depending on the piece of ground. And we raise sheep in the whole deal, but there is almost no moisture. And you certainly can't get deep enough with the drill to put it in.

Sara Harper: 41:39

And you're in south central Kansas, people.

Clint Brauer: 41:42

But basically from here and everywhere west, you can forget about the the most part. Even in southwest Nebraska, where we also do have operations, they got two inches of rain, and it's, like, not going to last any nine inches of rain over four weeks to even get back to where we can grow the crops that are used to growing. That's what I've been told when we grow like you're recommending we do, not because we want it's about the microbes. When we do cover crops, when we do it the right way, when you rotate your crops and we get these unique flavor properties because of that and the seed we choose, you're also storing a lot of carbon underground. And that absolutely has to happen. But I really think at the end of the day, there's 250,000,000 broad acres in the United States alone. There's, I think, a couple of billion globally. You could argue that's a lot of carbon, if you can put 1000 or £2000 of carbon underneath the ground annually, and you compare that to a gallon of gas, is about £20 of CO2, the numbers add up pretty quick. And that's really what we need to be doing.

Sara Harper: 42:48

Well, especially since that's the same practices that you're talking about also store more water underground. So at the same time, it's making that system more resilient in the short term. So it's just great all around.

Clint Brauer: 43:00

Yeah, it is. The crops we raised this summer would have never made it if it wasn't until on the soil. There's no way. Five years, forget about it. We never made it.

Sara Harper: 43:11

Well, this has been great. Are there any final thoughts you want to kind of wrap up with or remind consumers about and maybe share your website?

Clint Brauer: 43:20

Yeah, there's a really important thing, and just in terms of food and flavor, when we have a hydroponic stuff, one of the things my cousin did a little study, and it was about nutrient profile and flavor from the time we harvested to the shelves versus coming from a long distance. And it was amazing, but mostly for what we were growing. Hydratically. The difference in details, but basically there's a certain amount of time that it would just go off a cliff in terms of the value to you as a human and probably the flavor and all that. And it was very interesting. And my big takeaway from that was proximity matters on some of these things when we're talking about fresh produce. Right. And so proximity might actually matter as much or more than how it was growing in some scenarios. For example, I think hydroponic lettuce growing 30 minutes from the grocery stores, and you bought it two or three days after it was harvested, you're better off than whatever you got from California. Might have been grown using a better method, but by the time it gets trucked there, they lost a lot of that value. And so those are interesting things. Right. I'm not a huge given. I have greenhouses. I know the downside of it. I'm not a huge proponent of that style growing, but I think it has its place because of what I just said, that freshness matters too.

Sara Harper: 44:37

That's a very good point. And it's why we know that when we have a garden and we go out and pick something from it and bring it in, there's just nothing better. You can't get any better taste.

Clint Brauer: 44:48

No, you will never beat your own garden.

Sara Harper: 44:50

Right, that's a fact.

Clint Brauer: 44:52

Or if you have your own greenhouse, I'm always surprised people don't build more kind of just small greenhouses for themselves.

Sara Harper: 44:57

It's just a real mystery of what it takes or how.

Clint Brauer: 45:02

I think so. Yeah. And I always encourage people to just go build a small one. And don't try to grow in the summer, grow in the winter. If you're in this, where we're at in north, grow in the winter because actually we grow greens we've already planted. So you'll like this. We have cereal rye walkways. So you walk on cereal rye just coming up.

Sara Harper: 45:22

That's nice.

Clint Brauer: 45:23

And then we have the stuff we're growing in the soil, in the ground, the greenhouses. And all that food goes to Greenfield employees.

Sara Harper: 45:29

Oh, cool. That's great.

Clint Brauer: 45:31

Hilton robots and the greenhouses are right next to it. And so that's what we're doing. And so another Green Pill employee and myself, in the early mornings every other day, go out there and plant stuff and get it going. I tried it last winter. The interesting thing is it doesn't take a lot of energy to heat a greenhouse in the winter for Green, and that's what we found out. Actually, greenhouses are much more productive in the winter. I used to grow tomatoes when there's snow everywhere.

Sara Harper: 45:59

Oh, wow.

Clint Brauer: 46:00

Don't do that. That was a mistake.

Sara Harper: 46:03

You could grow basil or not basil. Not basil, no.

Clint Brauer: 46:08

Basil needs to be kept in the winter. When you've got high humidity, basil needs to be kept most likely over 60 degrees overnight. When it's 20 ambient or with wind, it's just going to cost you.

Sara Harper: 46:23

So which greens should they grow?

Clint Brauer: 46:26

Yeah, spinach is number one.

Sara Harper: 46:27

Oh, yeah.

Clint Brauer: 46:28

Okay, that's good. Spinach, romaine, radishes, carrots. We're about to try leeks, onions. Thinking about potatoes, I don't know if they're going to work. It's probably a little late for that. We do bok, choy, all kinds of Asian greens. We do chinese cabbage will be done by somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas. We make soups out of them. Cabbage that runs with cabbage in the ground. Yeah. So most of your greens in that what we do is you turn the thermostat to 35 degrees greenhouse and so it doesn't freeze. We keep it there. And so we cut firewood off my farm and or with propane right now. But I think if you build a greenhouse, do the got method. Do we circulate, dig under the ground? If I had to do it again, I would do it that way. You probably have snow heating cost at all, if any.

Sara Harper: 47:21

That's fantastic. It sounds so wholesome when you're chopping wood to fuel the greenhouse. Yeah.

Clint Brauer: 47:29

Robots. I always tell you I've done a lot. I've done a lot of crazy things, including how to burning log in my arms, running.

Sara Harper: 47:36

Oh, no.

Clint Brauer: 47:39

First time I lit up my stove and didn't know what the hell I was doing and the wind showed up and I didn't understand angles coming off buildings, pushing.

Sara Harper: 47:48

But you do now.

Clint Brauer: 47:50

Oh, I know a lot of nearly useless stuff. If you were just smarter than me researching right in the first place.

Sara Harper: 47:58

That'S great. And where can people find your company and what you're doing with the supply chain and follow you?

Clint Brauer: 48:05

Yeah. Greenfieldincorporated.com to see what we're up to now. Until two weeks ago, we had one of the worst websites ever to get venture capital in history, but now we.

Sara Harper: 48:17

Have a decent and you're on social media, too. You're on Facebook and Instagram and all of that.

Clint Brauer: 48:22

LinkedIn really is the one. If they want to follow me personally, it would be LinkedIn. Okay, but Greenfield is on all of those. Greenfieldincorporated.com, yes. Okay. All those places.

Sara Harper: 48:35

Well, great. Well, thanks so much, Clinton, for what you're doing and for taking time to share what all this exciting stuff is leading to. And as you know, I'm a huge fan, and so I'll continue to cheer along the sidelines and encourage people to come your way because I think it matters quite a bit.

Clint Brauer: 48:53

Likewise. Likewise.

Sara Harper: 49:06

You've been listening to Tasting Terroir, a podcast made possible by a magical collaboration between the following companies and supporters, all. Working together to help farmers, chefs, food. Companies and consumers to build healthier soil for a healthier world. Risotera owned by Dr. Joe Clapperton, rhizotera is an international food security consulting company providing expert guidance for creating healthy soils that yield tasty nutrientdense foods. Check us out@rizotera.com. That's Rhizoterra.com in the Global Food and. Farm online community, an ad free global. Social network and soil health streaming service that provides information and connections that help you apply the science and practice of improving soil health. Join us@globalfoodandfarm.com and from listeners like you to support us through our Patreon account at patreon. Comtastingowar. Patrons receive access to our full length interviews and selected additional materials. Patrons will also have the opportunity to submit questions that we will answer on the podcast. Tune in next week to hear more. Interviews and insights with myself, Sarah Harper and Dr. Joe Clapperton, as well as. The regenerative farmers, chefs and emerging food companies in the Global Food and Farm. Online community and beyond. If you like our work, please give us a five star rating and share. The podcast with your friends. Thanks so much for listening and for helping us get the word out about this new resource to taste the health of your food. Until next week, stay curious, keep improving, and don't stop believing that better is possible when knowledge is available.