Episode 338: Real Organic vs Regenerative Farming

Roots and All Podcast – Dave Chapman Interview

Sarah Wilson: This is the Roots and All Podcast, and I’m your host, Sarah Wilson. Join me as I talk about all aspects of garden with some of the top horticulturists from around the world. In this episode of Roots and All, I’m joined by Dave Chapman, host of the US Chart Topping Real Organic Podcast. We dive into the rise of regenerative as the latest industry buzzword, the troubling reality of corporate consolidation in agriculture, and how antitrust issues are threatening the future of truly organic food. We also explore the key differences between organic food markets in the US and the EU and what they might mean for growers and consumers alike.

Dave Chapman: Well, I’m a farmer in Vermont of the United States, and I grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in the ground. I’m an organic farmer and I’ve been an organic farmer for a long time. When I began, there was no such thing as organic certification, so we were just organic by the practices that we followed. Eventually, in Vermont, we developed a certification to, actually it was to help support the movement. But one of the goals of the certification was to help us connect with eaters who cared about the way that the food was grown. And so, it was kind of a dating service for farmers and eaters. Back then, the food system was different. It was not so centralized as it is now. There were a lot more co-ops and the supermarket chains were more independently owned. So things have changed a lot since then.

Sarah Wilson: Okay. So you obviously are championing the organic way of growing. There’s been a lot of talk as well about regenerative agriculture. Is that something that you support? Is that something that you are involved in? Are you seeing a lot of that now taking place in the US?

Dave Chapman: There’s a lot of talk about regenerative in the US. It’s still very small in the marketplace compared to organic, which is still small compared to conventional, conventional being chemical. Regenerative, of course, as it’s presented in our world, is a bit of a hybrid between chemical and organic. And, of course, I support anything that helps farmers move away from chemical agriculture. And regenerative can do that. But in America, I feel that the regenerative movement has been a bit hijacked by big agriculture. And it’s become very popular to support it by Bayer Monsanto, by Syngenta, by Cargill, by ADM, by Bungie, by Pepsi, by McDonald’s. All of these companies, all of Big Food, has found something that they can support without really changing what they do. So this is a complicated conversation, just as Real Organic is a complicated conversation. I’m waiting for a real regenerative movement, but I haven’t seen it yet.

What I see is a lot of commodity farmers, in our Midwest, especially, there’s been some embrace of the term regenerative, and what it means for them is no-till, primarily. Of course, there are other things that hopefully are being embraced too. Green manuring, which is done, I think, a very small level, but crop rotation, introducing, reintroducing animals so you have more of a mixed farm. These are all wonderful things. These are all the basic principles of organic agriculture.

And I think in our Midwest, there is a prejudice against organic, against the term organic, because it is seen as something that these strange people on the coast do, people like me. So organic is not a popular term in the Midwest. If I was a grain farmer and I became organic, people would start to maybe not want to sit with me at the coffee shop in the morning.

So, you know, this is a complicated conversation. Is there good stuff about it? Yes. Are there people who really believe in regenerative, which I think real regenerative would be real organic? Yes. I think the big division between real regenerative and real organic is real regenerative, by and large tries to minimize or totally avoid tillage. And I think many real organic farmers embrace responsible tillage of the soil. There’s very irresponsible tillage, too. And that is, of course, not what we’re saying. There’s tilling the soil to death. But I know many organic farmers whose organic matter has steadily increased under their management and they’re tilling the soil. I even know of farmers in California where the organic matter is higher in the field than it is in their hedgerows. And they’re tilling the field and they’re obviously not tilling the hedgerows. So again, complicated conversation.

Our world is seeking simple terms so that people can try and support what they want to support in the world. And they want to support something that addresses climate change. And they’ve been told that regenerative is the way to do that. And it can be, real regenerative can be. But corporate regenerative, which is like it or not, that’s the regenerative that is being supported by the USDA and that is being funded. The reason we hear so much about it is because Bear Monsanto likes it. Syngenta likes it. And Syngenta hates organic.

Sarah Wilson: Because presumably if you were no till, you could still spray a field with herbicide to get rid of foliage that you didn’t want. So it’s not really a kind of guaranteed good way of doing things.

Dave Chapman: Mostly people do spray with herbicides who are calling themselves regenerative. Of course, they’re those who do not. And praise be to them. But when California, the state of California came up with a legal definition for regenerative, there’s zero mention of chemicals. They are simply not addressing it, meaning you can do whatever you want with chemicals. When Regenified has made a private label, which will be pretty popular in this country for regenerative, they’re simply not addressing the use of chemicals. So it’s a chemical kind of agriculture under those definitions.

Sarah Wilson: I mean, listening to you, I can tell it’s a very, very complicated subject. And as it is here in the UK, to be honest with you, it’s not straightforward and there will always be arguments about the terminology and the practices employed. And I’m thinking about the sort of scale employed. I’m assuming that it becomes more complicated when you start growing at scale and money becomes more of an issue. Is it the fact perhaps that we maybe need to start looking at smaller scale growing to at least supplement our food systems, if not replace the big scale stuff in the end?

Dave Chapman: I think there’s so many reasons to encourage small scale agriculture. Of course, the question of soil health is one. And you can be evil to the soil on a small scale, so it’s not a guarantee. But I think that the problem with big scale scale is a funny thing. We have one farmer we certify, Alder Spring Ranch, and they heard about 450 head of cattle around 45,000 acres. They’re in the High Chaparral in Idaho. And they’re very careful not to overgraze the land. So they’re pieces of land they don’t even visit for 10 minutes a year. They’re moving the cattle around all the time. So scale is a funny thing. We can’t say scale is acreage. You might say it’s gross sales. But I think what we can talk about is corporate versus private agriculture. Although, you can have very large scale even with a private farm. But my model of success is small farms that are managed by a family who care about that land. And I think we have the potential to get the best of climate, the best of nutrition, the best of soil health, the best of water health, and not to be even a little bit minimized, the best of democracy. Because many small farms are going to care about their communities. A very large farm, the owner won’t even be in the community. He or she will be far away somewhere else.

And also, what happens with a large farm, is you start to approach all the problems of monopoly. And now farms are so consolidated that they are monopolies. If you define monopoly as 4% of the national market, just as one definition, well, we have brands in this country that are over 70% of the organic market. I’m thinking of Driscoll’s just as an example. And of course, Driscoll’s doesn’t actually own the farms. They contract with the farms. But the farms have to do things the Driscoll’s way. But what happens on the end of that, is that now you’ve got somebody talking to the government who has 70% of a national market. I promise you, they can talk to the Secretary of Agriculture any day of the week and just call them up. And you and I cannot call up the Secretary of Agriculture and have a hearing. So in terms of influence over regulation and even laws, these forces have a lot of power. So that is important. And of course, a small decentralized food system is more stable. It’s more ecologically stable. It’s more politically stable. Did I answer your question?

Sarah Wilson: Yes, you did. Thank you. Yeah. And actually, I was thinking, you know, as you said about the regenerative movement being supported maybe by people who don’t support the organic movement, and maybe organic even becoming a bit of a dirty word and people who you won’t share your lunch table with. But is regenerative, if it gains ground, is it actually going to threaten the organic growing movement, do you think?

Dave Chapman: I think it already is, which is interesting. When regenerative started, I was consciously supportive. I mean, it was still chemical agriculture, but I thought, well, it’s less chemical. They’re moving in the right direction. But lately, I’ve seen strong attacks on organic coming from forces that call themselves regenerative. And I just thought, oh, okay, I guess we are fighting for a market. At least they believe that. And in terms of things like government funding, which is very influential on agriculture in America, whether the government is supporting the way you farm or not. I believe that chemical commodity farmers are essentially, virtually all farming at a loss if you took away government support. And with government support, it can be quite profitable. And the government support, of course, is coming from the taxpayers. But it’s not like they voted for it. It’s just that their representatives are voting for it. And it’s just one of many issues. So I think it’s hidden. It’s a land mine. It’s a floating mine in the water that we’re hitting over and over again. And as a result of that kind of support of the wrong agriculture, it puts the right agriculture at a great disadvantage.

When you allow something that is not even competing economically, you violated the basic principles of capitalism. So I don’t know if capitalism can work as it was imagined, but certainly as it was imagined, monopoly was its enemy. And government was meant to be its protector from that enemy. And that is not how it’s worked out. Right now, monopoly claims that it is capitalism and the government is supporting that. So there’s our dilemma.

Sarah Wilson: Yeah. It does sound like the organic movement is kind of up against it. And I know obviously you’re based in the US and about a third of my listeners are in the US. So this conversation is very relevant to them. But have you got an understanding of the EU market and how that differs to that in the US? How is it different for people who might be in the EU?

Dave Chapman: Well, I’m more familiar with the challenges of organic within itself in the EU and in the US. The Real Organic Project was formed in order to try and bring organic back to what it was intended to be, reinvigorate the organic movement. And in the US, we’re now certifying hydroponic as organic. So hydroponic coming from all over the world, being shipped to the US. It’s not legal in the EU, but it’s legal in the US. So the USDA is certifying farms all over the world and bringing it here. The other thing is animal confinement is allowed in the US, but not in the EU. So we have these large confinement CAFO farms. It’s common for certified organic eggs in this country to have chickens who have never been outside in their lives. And huge dairies, 10,000 cow dairies, again, certified as organic. And the third thing that we struggle with is grain fraud. We have some domestic fraud, but most of it is coming from overseas, from other countries. And this is basically mob activity. And these are just, you know, criminals who are faking the paperwork, either at the point of origin or on the ship coming over. And then they flood the market with cheap grain, which undermines the actual real organic growers.

So in the US, last I saw, we import about two-thirds of the certified organic soy that is sold in this country, and maybe about half of the certified organic corn. In this country, there are over 5,000 acres of hydroponics just being certified by one certifier, California Certified Organic Farmers. And with sales that they claim are over a billion dollars. And in this country, the large CAFOs dominate and control the price of milk, meat and eggs, which has had the impact of putting many small organic farms out of business. And in the EU, all these things are illegal. And of course, the grain fraud is illegal here, but the EU acts on it, and it’s much more proactive about denying certifiers who have proven to be untrustworthy. The EU just does not allow hydroponic, and they’ve been very clear about what that means. And they have a sane definition, and they’re very prohibitive of confinement for livestock.

Here’s the interesting thing, Sarah. In that time that there’s been such a discrepancy, sales of organic products have gone up faster in the EU than in the US. And we’re about the same right now in gross sales. So you can’t say that you can’t do it and still be successful because the EU has proven that you can do it. I’m sure there are problems in EU certification. Any certification is going to have problems. But on these big three, they’re much, much stronger than the US.

Sarah Wilson: So you’ve got governments probably not acting in everybody’s best interests. You’ve got criminal activity, which is actually very scary in terms of food security, thinking about it long term. But on top of that, you’ve got the consumer perspective and consumer behavior. And I think there’s still perhaps a lack of information around organic and what it means. And there’s certainly a lack of supply here in the UK. And I recently spent time in Australia and I was very shocked to see that there is a tiny, tiny percentage of organic food in one particular supermarket, but the rest of it was all labeled as Australian grown. So that was their selling point. But again, unless you’re a very savvy consumer, you might think Australian grown, that sounds great. But then you’re not putting the two and two together and thinking, OK, well, that probably means they can use pesticides, all sorts of chemicals and might not want to consume. So, you know, how important is it that consumers are educated as well? And how do you go about that? It’s such a tough sell sometimes.

Dave Chapman: Yes, it is. We have to realize and really know in our bones that no matter what we call something, no matter what we name it, the corporate sharks will move in and they’re going to move in because people are responding positively. When organic began, there was no market for it. And when they passed the Organic Food Production Act, which is a good law, it was able to pass because there was no market and it was just kind of laughed in Congress and said, okay, a couple of these senators want to see this law, we’ll let it pass. There was resistance, but nothing like what would happen today. It would be huge.

But what happens when you have something and then people start coming to it, because people do want an alternative to the chemical system, is that smart marketers will think of ways to convince people that what they’re selling is what people want without changing what they’re selling. This is marketing. There can be ethical marketing and there can be unethical marketing. Unethical marketing is when you trick people into buying what they don’t really want. Ethical marketing is where you are able to connect people to something that they genuinely do want.

I think what we see in the marketplace, we saw it with natural and it just became a meaningless word. That’s going to happen with regenerative. It’s been embraced by everybody in big food, which means big ag, big distribution and processing, and big retail. I don’t see any movement to protect the word, so I think it’s gone. It’s just a matter of dead man walking and it will take a while. I don’t mean the word will go away, I just mean people will stop looking to it as the alternative that they desperately want.

Australian Grown, yes, they can’t quite do that with local. They tried it in this country, and they realized that it was easier to go around it. So regenerative is one of the ways of going around it. It doesn’t need to be local to be called regenerative. It doesn’t need to be much of anything to be called regenerative. Again, not criticizing the real regenerative growers out there who are trying very hard to do a great job, and some of them are doing a great job. I’m just saying, they’ve tied their star to a sinking ship in my opinion.

Sarah Wilson: And picking up on the point about the food security, obviously when we had the pandemic, we had food shortages on our shelves, and it felt definitely that the food system was actually a little bit vulnerable. And if things continue in the vein that they are at the moment, where we do have multiple large companies, corporations managing the food system in a large part, what implications does that have for food security? Are you concerned about that as we move forward?

Dave Chapman: It was interesting when COVID hit America, the next two years were the best years that the small scale organic farmers have ever had. They didn’t know it was going to work out that way, but they suddenly saw food buying, CSAs and things like that blow up, and people were turning to them for food that they could trust. Yes, the shelves were sometimes empty, but the CSA orders were overflowing. As COVID died down and things got back to so-called normal, we saw the CSAs recede and the orders dwindled as people said it’s more convenient to go to the store and get what I want. The dilemma here is they can’t get what they want in the store.

In America, you can go to just about any supermarket now and find organic food. You can find organic produce, you can find organic milk, you can find organic eggs. But usually, the things that you find in the stores are produced by a handful of large companies, not by anybody local.

There’s a story I tell of when I went to California once and visited the Whole Foods in Mill Valley. Now, Mill Valley is an extremely upscale community just north of San Francisco, and it’s lovely. It’s a beautiful place, and it’s only half an hour from San Francisco, but it’s very suburban, almost rural, and it’s got a highly educated clientele. People in that town know a lot about food, they know what they want, and they’re willing to pay for it. They have the means. I went to the Whole Foods in middle of August, it was the height of tomato season in that part of California, and there were no local organic tomatoes. The only organic tomatoes, certified organic, not really organic, were hydroponic tomatoes from Mexico. I thought, wow, how does this happen?

And I actually visited a farm, a farmer later that day, beautiful farm, not little, 500 acres, very diverse, just so many different things. They got a cow, they’ve got sheep, they’ve got goats, they’ve got figs, they’ve got almonds, they’ve got olives, and many vegetables. And I saw a field of tomatoes that they were about to till under. They were untouched, covered with ripe tomatoes. And he said, well, we couldn’t sell them. And I said, well, I was just in Mill Valley at the Whole Foods. What’s up with that? And he said, we used to sell them two pallets a week of food. Now we sell maybe two pallets every three weeks to the whole chain. And that’s how much it’s changed. That’s how much the local movement has died here.

So, you know, back to maybe your earlier question. Yes, eaters are going to have to be, if they want the food, if they want good food, they’re going to have to be aware. They’re going to have to take responsibility for what they buy. It’s not going to be enough to trust any label. You can trust the Real Organic Project label, but we’re a small label and we’ve only got 1000 farms that we certify across the US. So it’s not in every store.

You asked about how do they educate themselves? Well, we have a weekly letter that we put out and that is pretty informative. It’s short, but it’s informative and it’s often writing about that week’s podcasts that we’re releasing. So we have the Real Organic Podcast, which we have over 200 episodes now. And honestly, Sarah, they’re good. I just, Lindley and I get to go out and interview some of the brightest people in this arena from all different aspects. I mean, I’ve got one physicist in there and I’ve got one psychotherapist, but mostly we’re interviewing people who are directly in agriculture, either as farmers or as authors or as researchers or as politicians. It’s so we get to look at the food system with an organic perspective from every point of view. So that’s a way to get a pretty great education.

Sarah Wilson: Thank you very much to Dave for shedding light on this important topic, and thanks to you for listening as always. If you like this episode, you will love episode 334 from a few weeks back, with Joshua Sparkes talking about his revolutionary ways of growing food, and episode 296 with Erik Ohlsen, who talks about genuine regenerative design. You can download or listen to the podcast direct from the website, rootsandall.co.uk. Please also check out my Patreon, where you can make a one-off donation, or take out a monthly subscription to help support the podcast. Because if you enjoy the show, please help it continue. I also have a GoFundMe where you can make a one-off donation. Even a one-off donation of one pound helps, and I’ll be really grateful for your support. So please go to Patreon or GoFundMe, and search for Roots and All Podcast.