How Regenerative Agriculture Lets You Love Grains Again!

Discover a world of “oddball grains” like millet and sorghum.  It turns out that these gluten free ingredients can offer us all a lot – from a flavor and texture boost in our bread and crackers…..to health benefits….and also…..positive contributions to the health of the soil that grows our food. 

This week - we are taking a closer look at some of the lesser-known ingredients being embraced by the natural food industry by continuing our conversation with Snacktivist Foods co-founder, Joni Kindwall-Moore.  

We also discuss the role these ingredients play in enhancing both soil and human health…..and talk frankly about the supply chain and food processing challenges her brand is working to overcome……

Links:

Joni Kindwall-More 

Snacktivist Foods

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Transcript

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 0:00

When you look at the nutritional profile of, say sorghum, compared to other commodity crops that we commonly consume, it's shocking how much higher it is in almost every nutrient. So that was one of our big, big points. Like, for me, I was like, okay, what do I feed my kids? I want to feed them something healthy. And then as a nurse and someone who was involved in nutrition, I was a diabetic educator working in ICU. And I was like, Why isn't everybody eating this?

Sara Harper: 0:38

Welcome back to our podcast, Tasting Carrot, a journey that helps you more accurately navigate the marketing claims of better for you food by understanding the link between healthy soil and the flavor and health of your food. I'm your host, Sarah Harbor. That clip was from a followup interview with snacktivist food's cofounder Joni Kinwalmore. Joni set out on a journey to find better snacks for her kids who had food allergies, and in the process, discovered a world of, quote, oddball grains, as she calls them. Grains like millet and sorghum, which you will get to learn a lot more about in this episode. It turns out that these gluten free ingredients can offer us all a lot, from a flavor and texture boost in our breads and crackers to health benefits and positive contributions to the health of the soil that grows our food. In our last episode, we explored whether a brand can authentically be regenerative if it doesn't really know the farmers growing its ingredients. I think you'll see in our continued discussion with Joni just why this knowledge is so important. This week, we are taking a closer look at some of the lesser known ingredients being embraced by Joni's brand snacktivist, the role these ingredients play in enhancing both soil and human health. And we talk frankly about the supply chain and the food processing challenges that her brand is working so hard to overcome. Once again, I want to encourage you to claim the power that you have as consumers and use it to reward those who are working hard to create better regeneratively grown, flavorful, healthy food people. Like our next interview and frankly, all the folks that we've been interviewing, you can find links to their online stores in each podcast episode. And with that, we'll return to our conversation with Joanie and understand a little better why it's so important to know the farmers that grow your food. Well. Hi, Joanie. It's great to talk to you again. You too.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 2:47

It's wonderful to see you.

Sara Harper: 2:49

Yeah, well, we had such a great conversation last time, exploring what is regenerative and how your company is applying it and how your supply chains are doing that and how you're really working to both bring regenerative into your supply chain and be honest about it, which is so refreshing.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 3:10

It's hard.

Sara Harper: 3:13

Yeah. So I wanted to follow up with you and talk more about the flavor side. We've talked about this podcast being tasting terroir and trying to understand the link between health and flavor, because those are things that consumers are really interested in. But then also linking that back to the practices and the type of farming that we know really does add more. Certainly more nutrient density and depending on. Who you are, flavor is a very subjective thing, but it makes sense, at least, that there would be a positive flavor connection to having more minerals and absolutely things. So one of the really unique things about what you're doing is that you're working with some really unique grains. I mean, they're not unique, they're just grains, but they're not in the supply.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 4:02

They are. Yeah, exactly. They're kind of odd ball grains. Yes. They're ones that just the average American. If they're like, oh, what are your products made out of? And I'm like, oh, milletteft organ. They're like, what a what? Not everybody has heard of them.

Sara Harper: 4:18

Yeah. And you're very involved in the millet. Is there a millet association or organization?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 4:23

Yeah, so we've just launched like our kind of public facing side of the North American Millet Alliance. And really that's just trying to create a community around this emerging category of the millets, which are a large group. I mean, there's like ten different species that are considered millets, even though they're not actually related species. So there's a lot of folks taxonomy and kind of like cumbersome botany that needs to be navigated here to create this category around the food group. But next year the UN has declared UN Europe. Millets. So it's a huge opportunity for us to leverage that storytelling and that narrative around what the military are, why they're really important to global food systems moving forward, especially in the face of changing climate in a warming planet, and why they are nutritional powerhouses.

Sara Harper: 5:15

And what do they taste like? What does millet taste like?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 5:18

Yeah, actually they all taste very different. Proso millet is like a sweeter grain. It actually has a very nice flavor profile. And if you buy like, Dave Killer bread or a lot of the more healthier breads on the market actually usually do add the millet to it. It's a component in the original, like, Ezekiel bread, the Ezekiel recipe. And it's got a lovely flavor and texture that people really like once they try it.

Sara Harper: 5:45

And I'm sure there are all sorts of health benefits for people. Is it higher in fiber or does it keep its shell? It's not milled off or what?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 5:54

Yeah, so it really depends on the millet that you're focused on. Like, for instance, the Pros and millet I just mentioned is kind of like a classic one that people see commonly in like, bulk bins or in products. That one has to have a hard pericarp, like an actual that has to be dehulled. It has a whole that is not digestible by humans. So that one does have to be dehulled. But then you take sorghum which is the most commonly grown millet in our nation and in north American farming systems, and it does not need to be behold. So there's a lot of nuances in the processing and all these different millets.

Sara Harper: 6:34

That's very cool. What made you want to go down this path of sourcing, these kind of grains for your snack foods and baking mixes?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 6:42

Yeah, two major things. I mean, for us, I have to say, my entry point was not just out of curiosity, but out of necessity, because I was struggling to feed a family that had multiple food allergies. And we were looking for things that had high nutrient integrity, which millets, by and large do. And there are some really interesting information coming out about millets and about the diverse nutrient profile that they contain. It is rather significant in that they're much superior, especially compared to rice and corn. In fact, it's shocking. The united sorghum association just did some really great work from a nutritional standpoint, looking at the actual just basic nutritional profile, including minerals, trace nutrient, the things that don't usually make it to the mainframe on the back of the package. And when you look at the nutritional profile of, say, sorghum, compared to other commodity crops that we commonly consume, it's shocking how much higher it is in almost every nutrient. So that was one of our big point for me. I was like, okay, what do I feed my kids? I want to feed them something healthy. And then as a nurse and someone who was involved in nutrition, I was a diabetic educator working in ICU. And I was like, why isn't everybody eating this? I mean, why is this just for gluten free people? That doesn't make any sense. So it became kind of a personal mission for me to really kind of champion for them, not only for a nutritional buy in, like, hey, you're looking for more nutrition. We're trying to give people permission to love grains again, because grains have been demonized largely in American food systems for being empty calories and fostering inflammation and all these other diseases. But when you look at millets as a whole, they're a grain grain. They're a grain group that's rather exempt from a lot of those issues. So that's one of the reasons I champion so hard for millets as a food. The other reason is when you look at agricultural systems and you look at the role that they can play in regenerative cropping systems, it's really, really significant. And sorghum is a longer season crop. So it's not as much like a crop that you're going to sneak in as a cover crop. But many of the other millets, like pro, summer, other minor millets, like foxtail, pearl, many, many others, they fill a very vital role in cover cropping between other cash crops. And if we can add a value to those cover crops, the farmers are that much more incentivized to bring in more biodiversity to their farming system and then shift in a biomimicry way towards crops that are more naturally drought resilience. Long answer to a short question?

Sara Harper: 9:34

No, it's very fine. Do you know why Miller wasn't developed as a mainstream grain? Is it harder to process or what's held it back?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 9:46

Yeah. So I have given this a lot of thought and I think that there is really a nexus point between two major events in history that have made them underutilized kind of neglected greens. First green revolution. When you look at millets in general, they're not highly responsive to heavy chemical fertilizer regiments. And so they compared to corn, wheat and rice. When you looked at agronomy during the Green Revolution, where they were like, what can we pile chemicals on and get crazy yield improvements? And that was the primary crops that we feed today, soy, corn, wheat, rice, et cetera. And these other crops just became something that didn't have a lot of exploration when it comes to genetics because they didn't fit the model over the Green Revolution. Secondly, which now is proving to be important, because now that chemicals are very expensive and hard to get, many nations are scrambling to go back to these non Green Revolution crops because they will still perform, still produce yield without any fertilizers added to the system or artificial irrigation. So that's one reason. Second reason I think is cultural, having to do with more just have like a colonial food system mindset. Like there's a lot of racism associated with food. So when you look at, for instance, sorghum and the role that sorghum played in Africa and when slaves were brought to the New World, they brought sorghum seeds with them and there was a very important food group to African American communities in the south. And so sorghum syrup and sorghum products are commonly eaten. But I feel like it was kind of a lens of racism that they were not brought into broader food systems because it was literally thought of as food for slave groups, which a lot of people don't like to talk about that, but I think it's really important that we're just really transparent about this conversation. Fun to talk about. But it's important to talk about well.

Sara Harper: 11:50

As you explore because obviously a lot goes into making a food company and products and you're always dealing with choices about ingredients and putting them together and what consumers want versus also what your brand stands for. As we talked about with Regenerative and wanting to bring in this better way of growing that's really prone to in your brand. And then you've got these great things like millet and other sorghum and grains, but you also, of course, have to make sure it tastes good. And you're dealing with a palate that in a large part of the mainstream public probably isn't used to a lot of these things.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 12:28

Yes.

Sara Harper: 12:29

How did you go about this product formulation? Path of balancing out the taste that's going to be attractive just to an average person that maybe isn't sophisticated or been hardy and growing their own great all stuff we should do, but most people don't. And so how do you meet those people kind of where they already are with a palate that's particularly loaded with sugar, and so if it doesn't have a lot of sugar, how did you decide and balance all of that out in terms of ingredients you selected?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 13:01

Well, I'd have to say a bit of a rough learning curve for me because I came in really gung ho. Like, hey, we're going to do this. 100% whole grains, all this stuff. And then the early iterations, people are like, that's a little too hippy for us. Like, tone back on the granola style, like hippy food. I was like, oh, noted. So I ended up starting to make blends and blending in more things that were palatable to the typical American palette, given that most people are like, bread is white, it's bleached, it's enriched, it's tasty, it's basically flavorless. Nowadays, you look at, like, what commodity? Like, bimbo bread. All you taste is the sweetness of the starch. And so it's really tough when that's your entry point compared to, like, a European market where there's, like, a real market for the old world dark breads that have super robust flavor profiles. And so that's been a challenge for me. Like, what we first brought to the market was really robust everything. The very first ingredient was sorghum or millet or PEPH of that early product line. We immediately heard from a group of moms that they were like our early adopters. And a lot of these moms were struggling to feed families that had not only food allergy issues, but behavioral spectrum of different things that they were managing, from autism to other behavioral things. And that's what led them to an allergens as a diet, is they had a child who they're trying to fit this into their therapeutic regiment to help manage their behavioral condition. And so they said, hey, we need your help. We've got these kids, they'll only eat if it's white, and they'll only eat two types of food a day because that's just where they're at. So I actually did a series of blending experiments, and then I served food to all these moms and all their kids. It was the Washington Autism Society, actually, in Spokane, and they voted in what became our all purpose flour blend, which did lead with brown rice, but still had significant levels of millet, sore, gum and test in it. What great, we were able to kind of blend that down. And so we ended up so in 2018. It kind of broke my heart because I was like, I'm all about the ancient grains. That's what I want to put out there. We did a split where it was like, okay, picasso remained sorghum forward. Millet forward, our pancake and waffle mix remained. First ingredient is Task, still is, and that's our top selling skew. But then we put a milder flour blend in some of our other products, like our artisan sandwich loaf, because these moms were like, it needs to taste like white bread where our kids want to eat. It what we're doing now, however, because this is years later and I now have a lot more control over our supply chain and how it tastes, which is fantastic. I can select for sorghum that has a milder flavor. I can select for a millet that tastes a little sweeter. And now we're bringing back going into 2023, starting in January, we have brand new branding, brand new packaging, and again, we're shifting our ancient grains to the top of the ingredients deck. Again, I think people are ready now, and I think I've gotten better at blending I think I've gotten better at blending in it. So it's like we can sneak it in as much as we can.

Sara Harper: 16:22

That's so cool. That's very cool. And when you were tasting these different ingredients to decide, you know, what would go into them, were you able to tell the difference between places where you at least knew something about the farms, maybe that the whole supply chain wasn't fully regenerative, but at least they had various practices that they were sticking to and they had more knowledge about the supply chain. And then these ancient grains are just kind of a whole different supply chain bucket themselves because they're not mainstream. So talk a little bit about the tasting of these different stream.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 16:59

Yeah. So the very first ingredients that we started noticing real differences in the flavor were in the sorghum and in the millet. We have always sourced all of our tests from Moscow's Tech or Tesco, which is based in Boise, and they work with a really dedicated farming group that is contemplating and shifting more and more regenerative practices, but they're just not there yet. We're offering to work with them as much as possible, but we don't have as much visibility into the supply chain because of the nature of how it comes through the market. And they have specialized milling in a facility that handles tests, which is unique. So we're not really going there with the test. So I'm going to stay focused on more of the sorghums and the pros and millet. We were sourcing pro samill. It from Colorado. Organic Farmers. And we couldn't tell how regenerative they were in their practices, but we knew they were certified organic. We knew that they were using organic biologicals for their soil health regimen and for their fertilizer inputs. And we noticed when we couldn't get millet from them and then we pulled it from commodity and it wasn't organic, I noticed a flavor change, the commodity profile. And it could have been a different variety, too, which we didn't know because there was no transparency or provenance in that communication. But what we got from commodity had a little bit more of a corn flavor that was a little bit more pronounced, where the organic one had a sweeter flavor without that kind of corn flavor to it. We also noticed a change in the kernel size where the organic kernel tends to be smaller and has that sweeter flavor, where the commodity one tends to have a plumper kernel, but it's a little bit like a more pungent flavor, also more difficult to Dhaul organic is much simpler to dehaal. It goes to the dehauler with better efficiencies. And then in Sorghum, as I mentioned, when we would get organic sorghum, it would have a sweeter flavor where the ones that we would pull from commodity would have a more bitter flavor to it. And we were never able to figure out why or where that bitter flavor came from.

Sara Harper: 19:08

You were saying that the Sorghum commodity stream wasn't always consistent, which that's the whole definition not at all commodity.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 19:17

Yeah, I know, and it's still not. And in fact, I actually just went and got a bunch of sorghum at Bulk Bin, my local health food store. Bulk Bin, we were doing a photo shoot, so I was like getting bulk Sorghum for a video and I took it home and I had to clean it. I had bits of the straw and it had chunks of stuff in it and it had rocks. I don't know how you get a rock in Sorghum because Sorghum is like 8ft tall. I was like, how are their rocks in here? And I was like, Boy. The commodity side of Sorghum is struggling to meet those consistencies and I think it's because it doesn't have the spec sheet control that, say, wheat does. Where wheat flour standards, barley flour standards are strictly enforced by huge industry players that actually force them to farm a certain way to meet a certain spec sheet that's somewhat artificially fabricated through industrial chemical farming practices. But it holds that segment of the commodity market hostage and farming the way it does, which is not regenerative or organic. So it's a fascinating process as we kind of unpack this whole, this whole industry and it's kind of fun working in the Wild West with these oddball grains that nobody really cares about because no one set a standard for what the spec sheet should look like yet in these crops. So I think it's a great way to create a new category around rather unknown crops and bring them in as being like from the beginning. They could come in as part of their value proposition is that they lean really well into organic and regenerative farming systems and that's part of their value.

Sara Harper: 20:59

Yeah, well, that brings around, since we're talking about Sorghum, one of my favorite, favorite things, absolute favorite things is when two really good people that I happen to get to know and work with end up working with each other. So I know Clip Brower and we featured him in the podcast on the robots and he's growing sorghum, among other things. And so I was thrilled that you let people know that you're going to be sourcing some sorghum from them.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 21:28

Yeah, we're so excited about that project. I've known Clint for few years now. We've been talking through this whole process of how we can work together. Like how smack of us could be one of the past to market partners for Greenfield and their farmers who are using Greenfield robotics so that those farmers who are investing in Regenerative have a market to sell into that's not just commodity that will allow them to tell their story and have that farmer soil connection and that provenance piece in place. So we wanted to do it last year, but the sodium didn't turn out quite like we wanted it to. But this year we actually, despite crazy, crazy, crazy, terrible weather in this part of the world, we have a beautiful sorghum crop. So this is Clint's. Sorghum amazing. And this weekend I'm going to be running it through our little mill. We do have a small mill at our facility. Nothing that we would do on commercial scale, but it's awesome for small scale stuff.

Sara Harper: 22:36

This episode brought to you by the. Global food and farm community. Globalfoodandfarm.com a private online space where farmers, chefs, emerging food entrepreneurs and conscious consumers learn about and apply the latest science behind building healthier soils for a healthier world. Members also gain access to help with their marketing and communication efforts through our grounded Growth paddock, featuring DIY instructional videos and joint marketing projects that are designed to help small businesses find an audience for the better products they are making. The Community provides new original content to members each week in the form of video interviews, scholarly articles, and the chance to ask Dr. Jill Clapperton any questions you may have each week. To get a free online tour of. Our digital streaming library and learn more about how this amazing resource community can help your business grow. Contact me, sarahharper at sarah Sara at global foodandfarm all spelled out globalfoodandfarm.com.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 23:50

Because we're doing all kinds of fun stuff with sorghum. Not only just flowering it and using it as a flower in our baked products, but we also have a whole cool RND pipeline for other sorghum products that I can't really talk about, but very cool, exciting stuff. So we love the fact that there's no gross stuff on that storage. The robots did all the weeding so we didn't have to pour a bunch of chemicals on them. And no till. No till. Exactly. Because that's one of the things we're always up against with Regenerative. And I'm a huge proponent of Regenerative because I have a heart for transitional agricultural systems. It's like drug addiction. You can't just say, we'll stop doing your drugs tomorrow, guys, it'll be fine. It's not going to work that way. We have to have a transitional piece and with a goal in my mind, getting to a point where we don't have dependency on chemical inputs any longer and even in fantastic regenerative systems, we still do have a lot of glyphosate dependency. We still have a lot of and I'm all for technologies that can help us get that extra mile and eliminate those chemicals from those systems whenever possible. I love the work Clinton doing.

Sara Harper: 25:04

That's a huge missing piece. I mean, I've talked about this with probably everybody and I'll just admit I probably always will because my heart burns when I think of this, that there are all these people marketing about regenerative, and there are a number of large scale companies that even have their own mills or have their own the ability to process. Some of them have MAS in the name. I'll just say so they could do it. They could absolutely do it in a way that wouldn't add a whole lot of cost, and they're not and yet people like you, people like Jennifer Cohen, small brands and farmers like the accents who are becoming a brand, becoming a mill himself, you are the lynch pin. It's great to have some transitional grace for these farmers, but there's nowhere for it to go. There's no difference without a brand to bring it through and to capture that value. And, you know, I'm kind of jaded. I started out too naive and then I turned to jaded. So that's my own problem.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 26:10

Well, I have that problem too sometimes. You're a good company, Sarah.

Sara Harper: 26:15

But I look at what the trajectory they're on and it seems to me that there's just a push to try to sprinkle in a few things and call the whole existing system regenerative. Like, that's the path. Oh yeah, that's the path that they like the problem. You don't have to change any efficiency and get this whole big PR boost for the whole existing system, which is so far away from what the farmers that we talk to and that we work with are doing.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 26:48

Yeah, it's so frustrating because I feel like you'll hear this like I'll read a press release and here we just had the whole big USDA climate grant go through and some of these large corporations and they're like, oh yeah, we got DA DA DA, $100 million and we're going to do this. And I'm like, and we're going to be regenerative. I'm like, Guys, have you not been reading the agriculture books the last 50 years? We already have been doing that. It's called conservation agriculture. And that's not regenerative. That's just one tool in the shed that plays into what regenerative is. And I feel like that reductionistic mindset of like, okay, we checked that box, now we're regenerative is a dangerous thing. I'm glad these big companies are at least doing that. Like, yay for them. We need that. But should we pay them $200 million to do that? No, their farmers could be saving money by doing that, which means they could be saving money by doing that, and they're already profitable. So a lot of really fantastic smaller organizations and companies that did put in for that grant didn't get it because they were already doing the good work.

Sara Harper: 27:58

That's all the story. I used to work on climate policy 20 years ago, climate Nag policy on Capitol Hill, in the Senate, and then with environmental groups and farmers. And that was the most maddening part of it all, with a straight face, care about the environment so passionately that they will exclude the people that already did it. And because we have to get additionality, we can't credit anybody that's already done it.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 28:27

Right.

Sara Harper: 28:31

Not letting it sink in at all. The message that sends the undermining of all the first movers, all the people that pointed at them and said, you're stupid, you're taking too much risk. You're never going to get paid for that. You just made them. Right.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 28:46

Yes, exactly.

Sara Harper: 28:49

It's a little technical policy.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 28:51

Right. And what's crazy to me, in addition to that is, like, some of the applicants that I know that did not get awarded, some of them, they were already doing the good work. So it wasn't a matter of convincing farmers to transition. A lot of these particular grants were working on growing the market channels to get these products to market through novel channels. And again. This is where I think the USDA made a big mistake. Is that I feel and granted. This is just my lens into the people I've spoken to. I could be wrong. But they didn't put enough value on that market growing focus where they were like. A. Let's prioritize getting more farmers to start trying to do this or thinking about it. And B. Let's really put a lot of money towards validating carbon sequestration data. Like any grant proposal that had that carbon piece in it seemed to get funded a lot faster than the other ones that were like, let's try to create market segments and market pool for the farmers who are already doing it. That just was down the triage list, apparently, for the USDA, which I think is really tragic because in my position, I have way more farmers that want to sell to us than we can possibly move to market. And if we could have with our partners that we applied for the grant with, have we gotten that money, we could have built a more robust kind of a market pull that would have helped get a lot of this product to market.

Sara Harper: 30:20

Yeah, I know. I mean, it's like when I started Grounded Growth and we had wheat growers.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 30:25

All over the US.

Sara Harper: 30:26

And Canada and all varieties, and we're talking with a number of different potential big Millers and we could have put together a regenerative flower supply chain easily. But. Guess what? They don't want to pay anymore. Anymore. So what is the reason to aggregate all the answer? Like, well, we need to get the market started first and then we approve the concept and then that would be fine as long as the then part kicked in and money did actually come back down the chain, which it never.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 31:05

Does, especially when you're dealing with big, huge brands like the big guys that got a huge chunk of money out of this grant program. We already know it's very rare that they're going to have any sort of trickle down cash effects that ends up reaching the end producers because that's not how their business model is structured and it never has been. I highly doubt they're going to be able to change that mid flight when they're running billion dollar a year companies that are global like you don't change your business model overnight. It just doesn't work like that. But unfortunately, a lot of the organizations and entities that do have that built into their business model just weren't selected for the grant.

Sara Harper: 31:50

Well, the good news about all of this is that consumers have a tremendous amount of power in the market and increasingly they are getting more opportunities to vote with that dollar in ways that really matter. And especially I love that you guys are on Thrive Market because that's a nice online store that already has a lot of customers looking for better food and done in a responsible way and so they can find you easily there.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 32:24

They're fantastic. I mean, Thrive, honestly, they do their walking with their talking, which is fantastic because I'm finding that most retailers don't. I'll go to a retailer that I'm like, we've submitted our product line to multiple times, don't even get a call back. And then you go to their website and they're bragging about how they're the leaders of working with brands that are doing regenerative. And I'm like, well that's funny because you don't even bother calling us back. And we're one of the only ones in the grain sector that focus on regenerative and focus on climate resistant crops as a focus, which is, hello, that's a big freaking deal. And I'm like, come on now, guys. Really like, get with it. It irritates me because as a little brand, like, we would love to grow and be able to drop our prices along with our volumes. But you can't do that when you're coming in as a very small brand. You don't have that luxury. And it's not because we're making a lot of profit. It's because you're not competitive yet. So you have to come in and kind of an ultra premium positioning. So we're hopeful that as we grow and as we grow our product lines to leave the baking mix set. We never started our company to be a baking mix company. We started it to make great grain based foods out of different grains, unique ancient grain lens. And eventually we'll be back. We're launching our frozen lines, our Pizza crusts and Brownie Bites, and we have some fantastic snack lines that we're piloting and hoping to launch in the coming years. But without the business from retailers, we're at a standstill. I mean, we're literally contingent on retailers listening to us to even have a chance, which is a bummer, because when you're a little brand from Idaho, they don't really care. They're like, Idaho? Where's that? Ohio. I literally will argue with people that they're like, you're in the Midwest. I'm like, no, we're in the Northwest. They're like the Idaho is in the Midwest. I'm, like, no, Idaho is in the Northwest. Like, really?

Sara Harper: 34:30

Yeah, but they thoroughly check their supply chains for Regenerative, I'm sure.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 34:37

Clearly they do, yeah, because I'm like, I can give you the phone numbers of five of our farmers if you'd like to talk to them. But you know, what we're doing, Sarah I'm really excited about this is because we have been really hit and miss. Like, we'd be like, oh, cool, we can buy this. We do our purchasing with our Co packer as a partner. He's fantastic. It helps us solve some of our cash flow needs, and he's just a dedicated, amazing human. And so that makes it cumbersome as well, because it's not just us and vertically integrated as us in partnership with copackers, etc. And one of the things we're doing to help combat that need for transparent storytelling and the supply chain is we are releasing a QR code that will be live on our packaging as of January 1, where you will be able to go in and it won't take you to our website like most QR codes do. It'll take you to a world where you can end up at our website if you want to learn more about our products and you want to buy from us online. But it will also allow you to navigate into a world where you can go to the field where the millet was grown or to the field. And there's Clint's robots out there whacking down the weeds. Or me sitting down with Farmer Steve. And he's talking about his garbanzos and why he is a early adopter of regenerative. Where he lives in Nebraska and where they're doing with intense drought. You know, like and those are the stories that we need to tell. And then from our operational standpoint, because we're not a huge fan, we can only buy so much. We only have our farmers grow so much if they're going for us. So when we run out, we'll be out until the next year. And so if that happens, with that QR code being what it is, we can say, hey, guys, now we're planting with three more farmers. Meet them here's Farmer Deanna and here's Farmer John and whatever, and they're planting for us. And by next fall, you'll be able to taste in these products and it kind of brings them into a community experience rather than this static supply chain, which is not realistic.

Sara Harper: 36:37

Yeah, well, and it really lives up to your name. It lets your consumers be snacktivists, be actual activists in the best sense of doing something positive to make the change that they want.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 36:49

Yeah, right. And then it'll be cool to hear the stories from these farmers, especially farmers who are really in precarious positions where they don't have access to irrigation. They're significantly strained by drought, and the fact that they're shifting to really drought resilient grains is one of their only life saving measures of keeping the farm. That's something I'm really passionate about. And a lot of farmers have already lost everything, having to cut down orchards in California because they've lost irrigation. They're sitting there on foul ground, the dust is blowing away. They're going to have to turn their backs on their farms and walk away. And we're like, no, you don't. You can grow. You can grow posta millet for us. You can grow tricaley. Let's figure out a way to make a great trita kali cracker. Let's partner with like, California Wheat Commission. They already know how to do it. We can add value to these crops that desperately play a role in a changing climate in the face of agriculture. It's just that no one's doing the work to do it and investors are scared to touch it because they're like, boy, that's risky. I'm like, yeah, but it's the most freaking important thing you could do. Come on. Yeah. I'm so glad to eat.

Sara Harper: 37:59

I'm so glad you mentioned California. We commission and our dear friend Claudia Carter. She's a fan.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 38:06

She's amazing.

Sara Harper: 38:06

She is amazing.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 38:07

I know, I love her.

Sara Harper: 38:08

And she's helped a number of members in our network helped Jen Coher find her mill to do rice meal and help explain the whole industry side to farmers in our group that often are just in the dark about that. And they need to know it if they're going to have to move into that space to get their better stuff to market. So, yeah, I can't say enough about her. In fact, reminds me I need to get her on the podcast, too.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 38:37

I know, you totally do. It's an interesting world. We're all navigating because, like, we're kind of building the parachute on the way down, but like, someone who believes in future generations, someone got to do it. And it's not going to be easy. But I am confident enough that we can shift our food systems to where our grandkids and greatgrandkids will have food on the plate and we can feed the world against some pretty dire circumstances. But we have to change now and we have to put our money where our mouth is and get serious and be collaborative and work together as a team to get it done.

Sara Harper: 39:11

Yeah, well, that's what our global Food and Farm community is about to try to bring those people together and help each other and help consumers to have a hub to find to find these.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 39:23

Different people totally so important.

Sara Harper: 39:25

I know you probably have to go, but I do want to ask you about just as you think about the flavor of place, do you think that you can taste place? I know it's not a scientifically subtle question at all, but you're working with all sorts of different places and you know where they're coming from. So do you have any experience with having different tastes based on where it's coming from?

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 39:50

We don't have much enough data yet with our crops that we're working on to really have like a microclimate terroir type of a focus. My suspicion is that it will happen. My suspicion is that it will not only be reflective of actual geographical location and soil type, but it will also be highly reflective of the actual rotational systems and the rhizosphere ecology that we have. Because we know it's the rhizosphere ecology that drives a lot of the presence of the secondary tertiary metabolites that plants make that are largely responsible for flavor. And we do know that that is also a potential driver in metabolites that have certain functional properties that we're really interested in. Like for instance, the antioxidants and phytonutrients that are present in Sorghum that are not only antioxidants but have microbiome conditioning properties that are now being validated and proven in the lab, like University of Nebraska Lincoln and the Benson's Lab, they're actually starting to prove that, yes, these metabolites positively affect the gut microbiome. What we don't know is what's driving presence of those metabolites, like what key component of either the variety of the syrugum or the farming system or the rhizophyte ecology, what's setting that up to make that perfect storm happen. And so to add in the flavor nuance to that is like a whole nother thing that's going to be transformational in the next few years as we start to get enough data to really pull that all together. But there's a fantastic baker by the name of Sean Duffy and he's the head baker at the Green Shed in Spokane, Washington. And he works with a group of farmers, but mostly farmer Don Shorman out of polluts country in eastern Washington. And they have taken the tura of these weeds down to the hillside. And when you taste the breads that they make, it's like a whole nother world of bread making. It's the fine wine of the grain sector. And I'm confident we'll also find that in the grains that we're working with too.

Sara Harper: 41:59

Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, that's part of why I wanted to name the podcast Tasting Terroir, because it isn't just wine. It is in a lot of different crops and especially as we know more about the varieties, the place, the practices. And that can only come from knowing the supply chain and that's the thing.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 42:19

Exactly.

Sara Harper: 42:19

That's what will make it more valuable in the marketplace, just as certain wines are more valuable for the exact type of grape in place. And all that data information that fuels the story, too.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 42:32

Yeah. We're just going to be working independently to gather as much of that data as we can. I know Martin Broder, our North Dakota farmer, he's biodynamic, he's regenerative, he's organic, he grew crosa millett, a small kind of a test plot process for us this year. And we are going to get heat as sent in the soil samples, and then we're sending that off to BioNutrient Association and BioNutrient Institute to get some actual quantitative data on nutrient density there as well. So as this all comes together. The work at Audacity with Eric and Joe and. Like all these different people. We're going to build a database that's going to give us actual data sets that drive our food system towards quality and change the narrative. Because our food system has been only driven by quantity. And we have abandoned not only flavor and terror. But the medicinal properties that used to be naturally occurring in our food. And we've actually selected our food system away from medicinal properties, and that's why food's no longer medicine and food's chilling up. So we've got to bring that back, and flavor is going to be a huge driver.

Sara Harper: 43:40

Yeah. I'm so excited to see all these different pieces coming together across our network, and I'm convinced that these are the people that are really going to be paving the way for a much better food system.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 43:56

Absolutely. And when we have all that data in place, I can taste something, and I don't need data to convince me. I'm like, this is better. But a lot of people do, and industry does, and policy does. And so it's really important that we develop a body of basically evidencebased, practice guidelines for growing nutrientdense regenerative foods. And so I'm really grateful to all the work that's being done to everyone out there so that we have lots of options to quantify this moving forward.

Sara Harper: 44:30

Well, that is great. Thank you so much for spending so much time. And I have to compliment you on all your understanding of Agronomy and the Rhizosphere. I ventured to guess that there are very few food brand owners that even know what half those things are, let alone fluent in them.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 44:50

I was a soil scientist for a couple of years, like a grunt, so I know just enough to be dangerous.

Sara Harper: 44:55

That's wonderful.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 44:56

I did work in the labs of Dr. Tom DeLuca at University of Montana for a couple of years, and I collected thousands of soil samples and ran them in the lab. So, again, I know just enough to be dangerous, but it's also enough to really load a different level of appreciation for how that affects food.

Sara Harper: 45:12

Yeah, absolutely.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 45:14

Thanks, Tom. Those were really primitive years.

Sara Harper: 45:20

Well, good.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 45:20

Well, awesome.

Sara Harper: 45:21

Sarah yeah, thank you for having me and best of luck.

Joni Kindwall-Moore: 45:25

Yeah, always so much fun to get caught up with you. Thanks for doing the awesome work of advocating and getting the community rallied and I just love the work that you and Jill are doing, so dr. Clapperton thank you. Sarah keep up the alright. Take care.

Sara Harper: 45:53

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. Rhizotera 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@risotterra.com. That's Rhizoterra.com and 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 who support us through our Patreon account@patreon.com Tastingcarwar. 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. Jill 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 your improving, and don't stop believing that better. Is possible when knowledge is available.