24. Fixing Food Systems- Deep Dive w/ Hallie Casey

It's time for our first Deep Dive episode! You may have noticed during this whole Covid crisis that some types of foods were pretty scarce on the shelves at your local grocery store. A lot of this is due to holes in the food supply chain. Hallie Casey from the One to Grow On podcast joins me again to talk about some of the ins and outs of food supply and how moving to local and regional market strategies can help fix some of the problems. Hallie is brilliant and well spoken and you're going to learn so much on today's episode!

Hallie Casey
Website: hcasey.com
Twitter: twitter.com/hallie_casey
Sustainable food center: https://sustainablefoodcenter.org/

One to Grow On Podcast
Website: onetogrowonpod.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/onetogrowonpod/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/onetogrowonpod/
Twitter: twitter.com/onetogrowonpod

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker : 0:01

What is up plant people? It is Tuesday, August 11 2020. And this is Vikram Baliga. back with you again for another wonderful and exciting episode of the plant apology podcast, the show where we dive into the lives, careers and passions of some really cool, really awesome, really smart plants people. Have you been? Are you doing okay? I just want to say, before we jump into this, thank you so much for listening to my little tribute to my grandfather last week. It wasn't much I didn't say everything I wanted to but it means the world to me that you joined in with me for just a little bit to remember his life and the cool guy that he was doing something new today. This is our first deep dive episode. So I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I'm going to start bringing some guests back every couple of months every now and then to really drill into some of the stuff that they do and talk more subject Matter and find out some of the stuff that they study. And I wanted to start off with my friend Holly from the one to grow on podcast, Holly, and everyone at one grown has been just such good friends over the past few months as I've been getting into this podcast journey, and I am very grateful for them. And I just I really love these people a lot. And so Holly works in food and in food distribution and supply chain, everything else. And something that I'm really passionate about is food systems and local food and food production. Everything that goes into that. So with all the issues we've had over the past few months with COVID, I thought it would be a great first deep dive to talk about local, regional and national food systems and see if we can maybe discuss some of the problems with it, and some of the ways that we might be able to fix it. So that's what I did, asked Holly to come back. We recorded this a couple months ago. And y'all just buckle up. I think this you're really gonna love this episode. It's so good. And so much information and some serious topics. It's maybe not as goofy and light hearted as some of them all the way through. There are some funny parts I think, but it's stuff that you need to know and it's stuff that you need to understand about where your food comes from, and how it gets onto your plate. Real quick before we do that, I just want to mention again, our two partners bikaner Ridge, a local pecan company with all kinds of other great local products. Whether you live in a little bit Gary or not pecan Ridge has something for you go to pecan Ridge comm use the promo code plant people at checkout and get 10% off your order. Also, don't forget about local lbk at local ob k.com. If you are in this area and either shop in Lubbock or live in Lubbock or do anything in Lubbock, USA, you should be Member of local lbk you get discounts at all kinds of businesses, from restaurants, to clothing stores and everything in between all over town, it is a great way to advocate for our community, and a great way to plug in. So that's local, lb k.com. And there'll be links for both of these things in the show notes. But you all that's really all I have to say. Follow us on social media plan topology, all the places, leave me a review, I really appreciate reading your ratings and reviews and it really helps me out to know that I'm doing a good deal and it kind of keeps us up in the charts. So drop me a rating give me a follow connect on social media, join the plants and apologies plant below. I'm just I'm not even gonna edit that out. Because this is how I talk to these days apparently, join the plant apologies cool plant people Facebook group, and it's a lot of fun, and it's something you should be a part of for sure. So without any more rambling words, Just gonna jump into today's episode. So, grab a sandwich. Think about all the places that the food that went into that sandwich came from, and get ready for a wonderful, deep dive episode with Holly Casey from the one to grow on.

Unknown Speaker : 4:26

All right, well, we are back again. And this is, as I mentioned in the intro, the first of our deep dive episodes where we bring a guest back and really drill into some of the stuff that y'all found so interesting and that you've asked for more of and with everything that's been going on the past several months with lock downs and obvious issues in our supply chain. I thought one of the perfect people to bring back for our first one is Holly Casey from way back in Episode Five. Howdy. How's it going?

Unknown Speaker : 4:56

It's going so good. I'm so excited to be back on the show.

Unknown Speaker : 5:00

Yeah, no, it's great. It's great. And I, you know, I was listening to some of the old episodes the other day, and I think yours is still one of my very favorites, and I was just really excited to have you back.

Unknown Speaker : 5:10

I do I think I do hold the record for first plant apology guests to say a bad word that you had to come up with a creative bleep for. So I'm pretty I'm pretty proud of that mantle.

Unknown Speaker : 5:20

It is true. It's true. And it's funny because after like, since then, I've had a couple of guests that are like, trying to figure out how to do it on purpose. Oh, really? Because they think it's funny. And like, I had one guest, Dr. Jessica kurume, who was on and she was like, Oh, I had like three more I wanted to say I was like, really? Jessica? Really? Um, but no, it's that that was a that was a good first. I thought that was pretty great. So um, it's been I mean, several, several months since we've talked Have you been doing okay, how are things in your part of the world right now?

Unknown Speaker : 5:56

Yeah, things have been good. I am based out of Austin, Texas. So they've, they've been good. I've been working from home like pretty much everyone else doing lots and lots of new projects which is really puzzling Yeah, no but but it's been good work has been really busy because at my job I work in supply chain stuff. So the the food supply chain and the food system in general has really been constricted and really felt a lot of pain from being so rigid during this whole pandemic thing so that's definitely been new and interesting kind of that that craziness at work but other than that life's been good.

Unknown Speaker : 6:40

Yeah, so let's let's talk about that a little bit more I think at the at the top of the episode and I think last time you were on you were still teaching a little bit maybe doing some greenhouse stuff and a few other things but you have since gotten a really cool in my opinion, a really cool new job. Can you tell us a little bit you know, you mentioned you're in supply chain, but what what specific Do you do you do?

Unknown Speaker : 7:01

Yeah. So I work at the Sustainable Food center in Austin. And I do basically value chain coordination work and a little bit of technical assistance with buyers and farmers that are interested in selling to wholesale buyers. So, sustainable food center as an organization has a long history. It's been around in Austin for more than 20 years, in different ways. So for a long time, it was an organization that did a lot of work around community gardens, we have farmers markets that we run, we've done a lot of work on farm to work, Farm to School, food access education projects. But last year, the organization kind of did a huge revisioning and really kind of looked at the food landscape of Central Texas and saw you know, what is what's happening, what needs to happen, what's missing, and really saw this supply chain this this value chain piece was missing. So it's kind of moving in a direction To try to be more involved to really make it easier for our schools or hospitals or grocery stores to purchase from Texas farmers. So that is kind of the work that I am starting to do I just started in January and it's now June so it's been a crazy six months of a first gig once the gig but that's that's kind of the the summary of what I'm doing.

Unknown Speaker : 8:27

And gosh what a time to be thrown into something like that right like, you start and you know, I think when we start any new job right okay, I've got a little time to like, get my feet under me and figure out what I'm doing and then Coronavirus hits right to it two and a half months in and it's like, oh no, I've got to learn. That's so that's that's injured, but it's but it's such an important I think place to be working right now. I I've had this conversation with a lot of people and I said it. You know, I've said this for years that we're a week, less than a week from empty shelves in a grocery store in the United States. Yeah. And, you know, people thought I was crazy saying that for years, you know, when it's like, oh, no, that's, that's somewhere else in the world. That's Venezuela. That's whatever else, right?

Unknown Speaker : 9:21

And then it happened.

Unknown Speaker : 9:23

It happened and it happened fast. And people were totally, I think, totally caught off guard. So and I don't know how much you can speak to this. But in our traditional food system, right, where we're importing a lot of goods, we're trucking things, warehousing things, all of that. Can you speak possibly to some of the holes in that that maybe have been exposed? What, like, what broke down? What was the Why were the shelves so empty?

Unknown Speaker : 9:51

Yeah. So I guess let's start by kind of defining some of the terms that are being thrown around a lot these days. So the word food system is really encompass Think of all of the things that are happening within the, the, within the agricultural industry, right. So it includes all the producers, it includes processors, it includes buyers, and it includes consumers. So you know, all the way farm to table every single person and even includes like people who are supplying inputs to farms and ranchers. So that is a really holistic term that's, that's speaking really broadly and you can kind of narrow down geographically like the Texas food system. But even like if you talk about the Texas food system, like we import so much food both from around the country and from around the world, that is really hard to kind of limit your scope when talking about food systems, but it's still a really important consideration to really think through all of those connections. And then a food system itself is made up of many supply chains. So supply chain is basically if you would follow one tomato, that tomato is moving along, supply chain. So all of those different pieces. It's one direct line Basically it's very linear going from, you know, suppliers farmers all the way down, but it's just one of those. Sure. So if we take an example of our, one of our supply chains, for example, like maybe we could talk about swine production here in the US. So a lot of like, for example, here in Texas, we have HPV which is our large grocer. He gets most of its poultry from one processor, that processor gets all of their swine from several farmers, not a lot of farmers or ranchers Excuse me. And so if a swine processor has a case of Coronavirus, then that entire processing plant has to shut down. Yeah, which is what we're seeing a lot of because these processing plants are very closely packed. You have a lot of workers that are working long, hard work, lots of breathing and of course, we've had limited personal protective equipment across the to us. So, if you have one processing plant that shuts down or if you have two farmers that you know are unable or you know need to decide to, you know, back off their, their production system, then you just all of the sudden because it's so dependent on these very few actors, there is there is nothing to do. So particularly for me, what we've been seeing is a lot of processors have slowed or stopped production even for short periods of time. And that basically creates this this excess of animals that have nowhere to be if not processed, right, because because these farms that are so large scale, move animals so quickly and so precisely, to really maximize the amount of value that they can extract from the process of ranching these pigs, or beef or whatever it is that we're talking about. Um, so if you can't take it to, to slaughter then There's nowhere to put these animals. And so that's that's where we really see like disasters happen. And these holes and this kind of lack of resiliency, this this real rigidity that we see in the food system this inability inability to, to be flexible and to shift direction is really what we see problematic. Another example is like, like fruits and vegetables being supplied to restaurants, for example. So you have like a company that supplies to restaurants and that's their whole thing. And they do it really well, which is great, because it means that they can do it very efficiently. However, when every restaurant shuts down for weeks, then they don't have the ability to be flexible and to pivot that, that supply into something like grocery stores. grocery stores also don't have the ability to take it like if the distributor wanted to pivot it into grocery stores. Oftentimes grocery stores. procurement process is very rigid and requires really specific, like documentation and certifications and things like that, that this distributor might not have. So what we what we really see is like a lack of just Flexibility.

Unknown Speaker : 14:12

Yeah. And, and I think some of that, and that's such a good point. And I think some of that flexibility is necessary or inflexibility, right, some of that rigidity in the system is necessary to a certain point, because a lot of that, I think, in my opinion comes or from what I know, I'll say, comes out of safety regulations out of things like that, that like, we want safety regulations, right. We want our food being tested and made sure that it was safe, but then it does cause this bottleneck sometimes and, and for me, the thought of during a crisis food rotting in the field is like, gosh, that's that that's a heartbreaker,

Unknown Speaker : 14:55

right? Yeah, a lot of people were really struck by by those videos and images of Milk being dumped? Yeah, when you were seeing grocery stores that were having a hard time keeping milk on the shelves. And yeah, you're right. Like, it's really important, especially now to have really strict food safety guidelines. However, how can we think about building redundancy and resiliency into the system, so that the next time something happens, because it's not like this is never gonna happen again, even if you're not, you know, a pandemic, if there is a natural disaster, or, you know, whatever it is, how can we build a system that protects more people and makes it easier for people to get food and makes it easier for farmers and the people along the supply chain to continue to function as a business?

Unknown Speaker : 15:46

For sure. And like when we talk about and this is maybe a tangent subject and we won't spend too much time on one thing, but you know that that leads my mind into some of the questions And struggles we have with food insecurity in the United States, you know, and this is not even considering a worldwide population where it's far worse in some cases I, you know, I read a statistic recently and maybe you can confirm this that some some 30 plus percent of the calories produced or never consumed. Do you think that's that's correct. And in terms of food waste and leakage in the supply chain?

Unknown Speaker : 16:24

Yeah, I think it's between 20 and 30%.

Unknown Speaker : 16:26

Yeah, okay. That's a big number. That's, that's a lot of food and a lot of calories. And then when you think about the number of people that are malnourished or and when I say malnourished, I don't necessarily just mean that in terms of calories, but in terms of nutrient dense, actual healthy food. And I really enjoyed your your episode and I and forgive me, I can't remember her name, but the small farmer, the urban farmer in Chicago, I believe.

Unknown Speaker : 16:58

Yeah. So we interviewed so few bugs who was an urban farmer from Youngstown, Ohio. I was

Unknown Speaker : 17:03

not even close.

Unknown Speaker : 17:06

Illinois to

Unknown Speaker : 17:07

the Midwest, but but you know, when she talks about that, it's just it's so eye opening of all the complexity in it, but all the like, gosh, the social justice aspect of food is such a big thing. So, so I guess leading us into our topic really, for today, you know, we've got all these issues, potential, real and potential issues in our global large scale supply chain. So something that's been discussed for for years, and this is something I did some work in when I was still with extension was local and regional food chains and food webs and all these different things. Can you can you tell me, or tell us a little bit about what does that mean? What does it mean to have a local or regional food system?

Unknown Speaker : 17:56

Yeah, so that's really the idea of of D centralizing the systems. So if all of Texas's pork production goes through three processing plants, that's very fragile. It's not really resilient. And it's very centralized, which means that pork can be very cheap, but it also means that it can be very vulnerable. So if we're building out a local or regional food system, were really thinking through how can we decentralize this system? Maybe we build more smaller meat processing plants, maybe we you know, protect farmland so that it's easier for pork ranch or swine, swine ranchers, to to ranch in Texas so that we can have more local iced wine so that we know that we're going to continue to be able to have that supply. These these like small steps that might seem like really small things, and it might, it might be hard to draw that connection, but that is what can build a more resilient system. If we have A more localized system and a more diverse system, a more a system with more redundancy in it. If something breaks, then you're less likely to see some kind of disaster or crisis afterwards.

Unknown Speaker : 19:16

Right. And and, you know, I guess the idea is that ultimately we don't, in the long run, we don't have to maybe some day see those news stories with, you know, an old lady standing at an empty shelf of something, right? Because either the grocery stores have maybe closer sources to pull from or whatever, or there's other markets. So what's interesting to me in being, you know, my family I don't know if we talked about this. My family owns a small Peach Orchard here in Lubbock. So I'm in the local food game to a certain extent. And when you say local foods to someone they think, oh, farmers market, right, right. I think that's the Number one, where people's brains go is oh, you know, you pack up, you have a little booth, etc. but but it's really more than that. It's kind of what you're saying.

Unknown Speaker : 20:07

Yeah, I mean, it's really thinking about how can we shift our grocery system to protect not only like the economic interests of the agricultural industry, broadly speaking, but how can we shift our grocery system to protect our local residents and our local farmers and increase our local economy and protect our environmental, natural and natural resources? It's really like thinking more holistically What does it mean to be producing food locally? And why do we want to be doing it and really thinking through like, how can we purchase better food? How can we make sure our food, you know was produced with fair labor practices? How can we make sure our food was grown with environmentally sound practices? How can we make sure that our food, the money we spend on our food is going back Do our communities and supporting our local economies. All of that is related to local food.

Unknown Speaker : 21:06

Yeah, so there's, there's a huge list of benefits. Right? And and, you know, an interesting conversation that I think surprises people a lot is I use apples as an example a lot, because they're, they're an easy example of sometimes how long your Apple has been around right when you have a grocery store. And I can't remember if you talked about this on one of your episodes, but such as the fascinating thing to think about that, you know, your Apple that you eat from the grocery store may have been around for or off the tree for what eight months, 10 months in some cases, warehoused in a climate controlled room full of nitrogen and then chemically ripened. Yeah. And I put ripen sometimes in air quotes because the difference between sometimes a supermarket piece of produce that's come from question mark, you know, and Something that got to sit on a plant a lot longer is night and day. The quality difference for me is huge,

Unknown Speaker : 22:05

right? Yeah, no, it definitely tastes better. And I think that part of when we're talking about like resilient food systems, like we need to be talking about, like all of those costs, whether it's an environmental cost on like the diesel it takes to truck something and then store it in a ethylene nitrogen mix. Or the, you know, economic cost that we're not seeing about having these broader sources for for our food, not to say that, like, everything you grow, should come from a 10 mile radius around your house. We wouldn't have apples in Texas, if that Right. Right. But I don't know like think thinking through Where are the points where we can really support that locally. And I think that peaches are a great example Texas, peaches are incredible.

Unknown Speaker : 22:51

They're incredible. They're so good.

Unknown Speaker : 22:54

So good.

Unknown Speaker : 22:57

You know, and we we enjoyed it's a challenge up here. In the in the High Plains growing peaches a little bit just because of our late winters, but we make it our Yeah, late winters late freezes, I guess is what I really mean, but we make it work. But you know, the whole country is great, you can throw a lot of peaches there. So, I in a second, I want to talk a little bit more about maybe some of the roadblocks and getting to this place we're talking about because I think there are some sizable ones. Yeah. Um, but before we get into that one of one of them, I think, is education is a big part of it, like consumer education. So I'm going to throw a question at you. That is a big question that I don't expect you to have a complete answer to, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Um, okay, let's let's think of it this way. If you we have a local farmers market here and that I sat on the board for for a couple of years and inevitably, in our first market in May, people would come and say, well, where are the tomatoes? Well, they're still in Mexico right there. Right? They're not being grown here because our last freeze was a week ago. Yeah. So there's this whole concept of seasonality. Right? And do you think on? Okay, so I'm trying to and I'll edit this out, because I'm just rambling a little bit. But I'm trying to think through my question. So there's two sides of this, we can either try to educate the consumer on eating seasonally, you know, and maybe thinking about canning and some of those things to get through our food preservation to get through some of the long periods. Or we can talk more about sort of a mixed market that we get the things locally that we can, you know, still bring our citrus in and still bring our out of season things. And do you think there is a strategy between those two that's better than the other?

Unknown Speaker : 24:51

No, I think both are important. And here's why. So I think that a mixed market approach is really key because like, if We got all of our food from, like the counties around Austin and then a tornado blew through, then we would have very little food. So I think considering geographic specific disaster is really key when you're talking explicitly about like disaster mitigation in building a resilient food chain, and food systems, right supply chain food system. Um, in terms of educating the consumer, I think that there's a lot of important work that's being done. I think part of it is incremental. But I think it's, I think that one, this moment is making it much easier to do that work. Because before this pandemic, a lot of these ideas were really abstract. And it was really hard to make it clear to consumers how fragile The, the supply chains actually were. Um, so I think that after having seen that It's gonna make it much easier of a sell both to policymakers and to individual consumers, and also to institutions and other retail markets to because they felt it on their supply chain. The other part of that second part about education, I think is that's why it's really key for like the work I'm doing to be reaching out to institutions, to the people to the, to the organizations that people are with throughout their lives. So like we're working K through 12. We're working with universities, we're working with health care, we're working with restaurants and grocery stores. If it becomes more normalized to have a seasonal menu, I think that that will make it more normal. So outside of just individual behavior change at the household level, I think really talking about cultural shifts and setting priorities at a larger level. Whether that's Through state federal local policy,

Unknown Speaker : 27:03

or if it's through,

Unknown Speaker : 27:07

setting those priorities at a at on the private side, or I guess, you know, schools and universities or public as well, but kind of on that on that institutional retail side. And those organizations have so much space. In, in consumers, as in consumers is whatever that word is, in their, in their lives in their everyday lives, right. And so I think that if we can get those players bought into the idea of really values based purchasing, and thinking about seasonality and thinking about labor practices, and then talking about them out loud, I think that will make it much easier for consumers to buy into that because part of the other thing right now is it's really hard for a consumer to buy into values based purchasing. If that Option is, and farmers market here is the one Farmers Market make your Saturday mornings free, are like getting a full CSA if you're one person where you're going to do the full CSA where you have 1000.

Unknown Speaker : 28:14

Right, like, it's hard. If those are the access points, not that direct to consumer marketing is not really important for this work it is. But I think expanding that work out into these more mainstream outlets can be really a huge game changer for regions. Absolutely. And we know we're starting to see it, I think we know we have a local Well, they are less local than they used to be. But we have a cursory chain that started up here on the High Plains called united united supermarkets and they've, they were bought by a larger group recently, but one thing they do that's really cool, is they have their, you know, traditional kind of market stuff that comes from wherever and it's tomato, you know, and food labeling is pretty extensive in some cases. So you can look at the label and see where it came from and a lot and all that. But if it's grown in Texas, they actually put a sign up with a picture of the family that grew it and some information about the farm. And I think those are such important interpretive pieces for the consumer, that if we can connect the food we eat with a human being that made it I think that helps in terms of adoption of, you know, maybe paying a little bit more for local brews or something. But also I think that that eventually leads to reduce some of these food waste issues. You have more skin in the game, so to speak.

Unknown Speaker : 29:35

Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that, like food. waste is such a tricky thing to talk about with consumers because like, you're right, they're they're paying like 10 cents for like that piece of carrot or whatever that they're throwing away. But yeah, I think that, that bringing that bringing more transparency to where that food actually comes. From d commodifying. it, I think that that can definitely have a huge part in that process.

Unknown Speaker : 30:07

So we've talked about a couple of them. But are there other major hurdles You see, in getting us to this place where we can have this really robust mixed market with a really resilient system?

Unknown Speaker : 30:21

Listen, friend, it's nothing but hurdles. If

Unknown Speaker : 30:25

I can talk specifically about like, the issues on the farmer side, I can talk a little bit more about like the supply chain issues, but a lot like the core issue is that it's more expensive, right? That's the core issue. We don't want to make food more expensive. We've been talking about food access throughout this episode, and if you make food more expensive, it's less accessible. Yep. However, like now I feel like we have the space to really frame this as a as a more holistic issue. Like how expensive was the pandemic Right. I mean, like the USDA put out how many millions of dollars in loans? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker : 31:07

Like I want a lot of millions

Unknown Speaker : 31:09

a lot. And it wasn't even love it like it was loans that you didn't have to pay back, which is a great. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's been, it's been so expensive to not have that resilient system, that I think it's much easier now, especially on the policy side, to really look at systems like our like our farm subsidies, and think critically about how those can benefit a more resilient system. Because right now, they don't really do that. Yeah, no, it costs it costs more money. Like that's so hard. Like, I'm trying to go out and talk to institutions about why it's important to buy from local farmers. And it's three times as expensive to buy from local farmers and it's a school district with a very limited budget. And of course, now like all of this conversations are very different. Because they're just trying to, you know, keep staff on and so that that work has really shifted into thinking more creatively about how we can support farmers through this. But, like, that's just a tough sell. And I think that that's where we have to look at, like policy solutions. Like we really have to speak up, talk to our elected representatives try to create change at a policy level to really create the change that we want to see within our communities.

Unknown Speaker : 32:23

And that's, that's such a great point, that, unfortunately, you know, it is what it is, I guess, but so much just comes down to how much does it cost? Oh, no, I can't do that. You know, I and, and those are real, like real limitations. They really are. Like, if I can go you know, and I'm very fortunate in that if I want to go to the farmers market, and pay however many dollars for locally grown tomatoes when they're a season like I am fortunate enough and privileged enough to have that information, that ability. Hmm. But for so many people, that's just not just not the case. Right? So no, I totally agree that we have to balance this improving the system while still improving access. And it's Yeah, I don't have the answer to that.

Unknown Speaker : 33:12

I mean, that's like, that's the real key. Like, we have to think about why are these tomatoes cheaper than those tomatoes? Like, why is it cheaper to buy tomatoes that traveled halfway across the globe? and other kinds of spades? Why is it cheaper to buy this beef that was grown, you know, in a commodity or in a in a conventional system than to buy, you know, fully grass fed local beef? Why is that cheaper? Were those costs being cut? Part of it is an economy of scale for sure. Like me, Ron? Yeah, totally, you know, take advantage of economies of scale. But where are those costs being cut? And I'm, it's not that it is actually cheaper when you look at it in total, the price tag is cheaper. What we're seeing is we're seeing shortcuts in environmental regulations. We're seeing shortcuts in labor protection. We're seeing shortcuts in, like with just farm subsidies, tax breaks for these large corporations. Yeah, those costs are real, even if they're not incorporated into the price that consumers are paying. So even if you know you're buying something that's a cheap food item, that doesn't mean that it's equal, right? That doesn't mean it's a quote, like if you think about why, why are we accepting as a society, that it's okay, for a person who is poor, to buy something that was made with slave conditions are similar to slave conditions, like, why is that acceptable? Like, why don't we just look at policy solutions to make good food cheaper, like we can do that we can protect everyone along the supply chain and we can vote with our values. But, but right now, the system is just not set up to do that. Hopefully it will, you know, make hopefully, we're going to They're in the end, and I really do think that we will. I feel like I'm bringing a lot of downer energy to this right now.

Unknown Speaker : 35:04

No, no, no, I don't I don't think so. I think it's so important. And like you've said a couple of times, like, Yeah, sometimes if you dwell on it too much, it can be depressing, right? It's just Oh, man, like, there's, there's so much work to be done. But I think what we're seeing in so many of these social issues right now, and, and so we're recording at the end of June, and this will come out early August, who knows what the next book that's gonna bring? Who knows what the world looks like today as people listen to this, but you know, we have to talk about these issues. We have to be willing to bear the discomfort sometimes of hearing about and talking about the these issues because they're important they matter. Because they're, they're tied to human beings. And I think I keep I keep coming back to that, you know, there's a, I think the episode that will have come out just before this One of the points that that guest made is that in science and and things that that we do, he's a plant breeder, or was a plant breeder. He says, our pursuit should be defaulting towards life. And as we build policy and all those things, it should be to make people's lives better. For everyone, right, like we're, the equity is a big conversation right now and, and, and fixing some of the problems and again, I feel like I'm soapboxing a little bit and I don't mean to but it is it this is something that I'm passionate about for sure.

Unknown Speaker : 36:36

I mean, we're doing an episode on values based, like foods, foods, this whole thing is a little bit.

Unknown Speaker : 36:44

Yeah, that's fine. I think people are still listening. It's good. It's good. So I guess that leads me into the one of my last questions is like, and we've been discussing it so maybe there's Maybe it's not even a separate question, but like, where do we go from here? How do we how do we actually start actively in our own lives and in our own spheres of advocacy and influence start pushing forwards to some of these solutions?

Unknown Speaker : 37:14

I think that's a great question. I think one you can definitely like look at where the economic development money in your region is going, whether it's at the county level or at the state level, or whatever it is. I know that's a bit activism me for for folks. But farmland preservation is really key when we're looking at these food systems issues. And that's something that in Texas, really needs to be worked on. Like we have to keep this farmland otherwise we got nowhere to grow that local food that we need.

Unknown Speaker : 37:46

Yep, it's important. But

Unknown Speaker : 37:48

you know, a little bit more specifically than that, or I guess you know, a little bit less of a lift than that is, you know, trying to get to know your local food system. Better, just getting to know what are the grocery stores in my areas? What are their values? What are their practices? You know, are they focused on whatever the you know, best sale is? Are they doing some cool work with local procurement? Is there a way that I can advocate for that? If I really care about the store? What are my local farmers markets were my local farmers. It's a long road. You know, it's it's not something that everyone's going to be educated on from day one. It's not something that you just go out and you get involved and you're just done. It's a it's a long road about really learning. But the good news is the most important work is done on a local level. So really just starting to get involved in the smallest ways in your local food system can make a huge difference. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker : 38:49

yeah. And I think that's such a great take home point that we have the ability and the power to make real change, with our purchasing decisions and everything else. Yeah, and that's I think that's a great like, you know, that's that gives me a lot of hope for the things that we can do. So just kind of wrapping up um, you have recently I guess at this point on on one to grow on your podcast, just wrapped up a four part series on on local foods. Is that correct?

Unknown Speaker : 39:21

It's a three part series. We interviewed an urban farmer that we mentioned earlier, a farmers market manager and then we are we interviewed some folks that were doing work in the good food supply chain area.

Unknown Speaker : 39:35

Okay, I keep missing on details about this.

Unknown Speaker : 39:39

One, okay, so I was I had been listening I promised I promised I pay attention. My brain is just full of dissertation right now. And it's

Unknown Speaker : 39:47

oh my gosh, I I'm so glad I'm not you right now.

Unknown Speaker : 39:51

People say that a lot. I don't know what that's about.

Unknown Speaker : 39:55

So what it may be hard to just narrow one down, but what is it Your favorite thing that you've learned through that that process just talking to some of these really cool people

Unknown Speaker : 40:08

or it can be a couple if you don't want just narrow one.

Unknown Speaker : 40:14

I think I think one of the, one of the like really great takeaways that I had of those interviews and also just from from the last couple months is really, really seeing how many people are really in it for the long haul and like really dedicated to the good work of, you know, protecting all of all of this all of the people and the planet. And just hearing their stories about how they find this work and how they get involved and just stay committed to to doing that work that is so focused on like really just like your values. is so inspiring to me and it makes it so much easier to get that work done every single day. our interview with Sophie about Particularly was really eye opening for me. I always love interviewing farmers. It's always so much fun. But her experience she has done a lot of advocacy on the local level as kind of a leader in her area in Youngstown. And she's also a healer. The way that she got into the food system into farming, her daughter had a condition that needed to be treated and she was using an herbal medicine to treat this and it was just so expensive. And she was like, why is this? This Why is this this expensive for me to just like heal my child. And she talked about her experience as a mother really getting into farming from an access and from a sovereignty perspective. And hearing her her perspective on that just was really really eye opening for me and just my gosh, tugged at my heartstrings. It was really beautiful. But honestly like all of those, like people that were interviewed are just so much smarter than me. So I feel like I will just be listening to those interviews Forever and always learning more.

Unknown Speaker : 42:08

Yeah. Now they're really cool. It really It's really big. Cool. So, um, well, is there anything we missed? Is there anything that you came in really wanting to make sure you said that, that you haven't,

Unknown Speaker : 42:20

I feel like we got through most of it. I will just say like, Don't worry, there is hope. We're gonna get we're gonna get there. In the end, I really do think that I'm a bit of an optimist, but also like, there's a lot of people who really believe in this and i think that i think that we're gonna get there. So if you left this feeling like despair, I would not dwell on that friend. I think that we're gonna get there in the end.

Unknown Speaker : 42:44

Yeah, I totally agree. I 100% agree. And I, you know, I actually found a lot of this to be very, I mean, educational and hopeful. And I think that our future and our hope is in being better educated about these things. So I think that was definitely definitely hit what I want To do this episode. So tell us again where to find you tell us about some of the stuff that you do.

Unknown Speaker : 43:07

Yeah, so you can find me on Twitter at Holly underscore Casey. You can find my podcast at one to grow on pod.com or at one to grow on pod on all social media.

Unknown Speaker : 43:22

I guess that's pretty much what I do and

Unknown Speaker : 43:25

oh, yeah, you can find the work I do at the Sustainable Food Center at sustainable food center.org. Yeah, please, if you want to talk more about either soil or food systems, my two absolute favorite topics, feel free to reach out.

Unknown Speaker : 43:41

And I hope you do and I would strongly encourage you to go listen to to want to grow and it's one of my favorite shows and I look forward to it coming out every every other week.

Unknown Speaker : 43:49

So my gosh, thank you so much for saying that.

Unknown Speaker : 43:52

I really mean it. I really do. And, Holly again, thank you so much for being on with me. I always enjoy talking to you.

Unknown Speaker : 44:00

Thank you so much for having me on. It's been so much fun.

Unknown Speaker : 44:03

So be encouraged as you listen to this even though it was maybe a heavier topic than we normally do on this show that you can make a difference. And that planting a garden and supporting local foods, and all of those things will go so far in closing some of these loops and closing some of these holes in our food system. Go follow Holly go listen to one to grow on, you will be better for it. Thanks so much for listening. It is because of you that I'm able to do these fun things that I can do. Thanks to the Department of plant and soil science here at Texas Tech for the ongoing support and just being so awesome as I go through this and just for being such a great place to work. Again, follow us on social media, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, search for planet topology, look for the green background, the little white tree, you can support the show@patreon.com COMM slash plan topology if you're so inclined, and again, thanks for being rad. You guys are super cool. And we'll see you again next week with another wonderful episode of the plant topology. Transcribed by https://otter.ai