 This is the OGM weekly call on Thursday, August 3rd, 2023. And Doug, do you mind saying that again? That was really, really cool. So there was a program at Caltech called Guest of America, something like that, and it paid for interesting people to come and spend two weeks with the students. And I was on the committee to show up in Heimer around when it was his turn to be that person. And the second week we're walking across the campus and he says, Doug, what are you going to do when you finish? And he must have picked up some sense that I was not really happy with physics. I have an idea. He said, I have a friend who's chair of the psych department in Berkeley, a tolman, why don't you go up and talk to him. So I became within 48 hours of grad student at Berkeley. Wow. Love that. I was on the committee on lectures at UC Irvine, other institutions and that's how I got to meet like the author Mario Vargas Llosa. Carlos Fuentes. Many months ago. And very briefly, he autographed my book and I told him my story. I told him that I had grown up in Lima. He was my guest at UC Irvine, and I had also grown up in Argentina. So he signs my book. So we have a fun format today. Klaus and Kevin came up with the idea of interviewing one another since they are both doing things that are near and different and interesting and useful and all of the above. So I'm going to turn the format over to them and let them sort of lead in any way they'd like to. I'm going to ask my old, my old boss Esther Dyson is going to show up at probably 35 after. And I'm driving her to the airport after we chat for a while here. So I'm going to drop off the call. And we'll ask for who would like to pick up the con and take the call through to wherever you'd like to go. Any questions any thoughts before I hand over the con. Everybody's cool. You can have Esther pop on and say hi. I think I shall I'm going to, I'm going to unplug my earbuds and do that so it's a good idea. I was thinking the same thing. Cool so take it away class Kevin. Yeah, we haven't had a chance to rehearse now. We can start me asking you a question or you asking me a question about what you're doing or how you feel about things on the list. Those are two things I think. Okay. Well, my, I mean, as you know, I've been working on food and agriculture within the context of climate change for some time now really since my retirement almost 2013. You know, working with the Sierra Club, I'm on the National Grassroots Network team there and citizen climate lobby. They sort of have stepped out of agriculture but now I'm doing local projects with them. And then a host of other NGOs that I got to meet so I'm sort of in an advisory role to these groups and I should have stepped in and out whenever I feel like and make a useful contribution then I go back and do a presentation or webinar or something. I typically do maybe two or three webinars a year, and each one of them takes me a good three months at least to prepare for now by the time I collect the material and every time I advance. I mean I do these webinars because I really have to pull my thoughts together and do research and so on so it's very useful for me. I've always had a good fortune to have really interesting panel members know who you can learn from. So that's pretty much so my, my, go ahead. Well just so what's the goal of the webinar and who's the audience of the webinar and how was that. How are new folks finding your webinar. So the, the, I mean, I've had in the beginning just a focus on hey guys let's pay attention to food and agriculture because that this is not good news on the horizon there's a lot of stuff happening in the food system that is just quite simply unsustainable that unsustainable in the context cannot continue in perpetuity it's going to crash. And that was clear as could be 10 years ago to me when I first got into this wasn't clear to me when I was working because I never was exposed to this kind of information but then it became clear. So about two and a half years ago, I started shifting and this was with my experience with Citizen Climate Lobby I became really aware of the legislative process, what what is happening in Washington, and how that impacts the entire system. So I started a book club, about two and a half years ago or three years ago almost on the farm bill within the Sarah Club, and that mushroomed out, because they carried this all over the place kissed the ground then developed a book club, you know, on this on the farm bill and everybody now has descended on these fun bill discussions, which is creating huge pressure in Washington, because we're talking billions of dollars here at stake, which really drive this entire system so we have gotten a really thorough understanding of the pathologies that are being driven by the way this money is being allocated to commodity crops. I mean, foods and vegetables and nuts and all those are specialty crops, right. But whatever reason and regular crops is corn and sorry and wheat. Yeah, so, so that's so I'm now moving on because the farm bill discussions I'm full swing they are, they are just a dozens of NGOs who have swarmed into this field. And there's not much I can contribute at this point but I'm moving on. And my focus now is, how do you connect farmers who want to shift into regenerative practices with markets, because the markets are totally controlled. And they are vertically integrated. And the food industry doesn't want to change is just as rigid as the oil industry is the fossil fuel industry that don't want to change, because their business models don't work when you are decentralizing your supply chain and localizing production and so on. So that's sort of in a nutshell so so in because of my pivot towards community based activism. I thought Kevin would be the person to talk with him. That's over to you. Okay. Well, you know, I think one of the things I do a lot of national connecting of organizations with funding and partners and that's where neighborhood economics works. And I'll just describe a little bit that I know what I'm doing there. There's a group of, for example, indigenous entrepreneurs and funds who wanted are saying no to soak up the conference that I used to run, because they want to lump them all into one indigenous bucket number of groups presenting and they said no we have one space for indigenous y'all find the lowest common denominator and so we're giving them a space but the other thing is, they want to set the terms of engagement. So indigenous deals don't want to deal with exit. If it's working. Why would you stop and extract. You have to do deals that could be intergenerational, you know that, you know, the typical agreement is until until the river stop running, you know, I mean, things fail. But that's the timeline and you have to agree on a view of the future. If you're going to co invest together, you know what future you aiming at and what future is the tribe aiming at and those are really, you know, just just figuring that out and so one part is we will set up a rubric, and you know, we don't like exits and then see what else can happen from that so that that part's interesting and we're getting big foundations who want to think about it and want to think about their power locally. I've been a really I've had a really interesting failure. That's, I tried to do a donut economics group, which was based in a bio region it turns out donut economics is much better in a city. We had multiple reasons we failed that are that are worth talking about. And but we're reconstituting as circles, where we have a methodology with the problem with donut is that they give you a toolkit with what you should make the pieces into, you know, you know, your community and then you do this and then you do that. I think it was too hard for everybody to get the high concept and so we're going to go with circles that guide you that have a methodology and we'll go from there and build it on. What the people really wanted was relationship with folks who cared. We're not going to let anybody who is just collapse or have the floor. I'm sorry but we're just not. We're looking at things like a Yana and Johnson's new book you know what if it would get it right. And we're looking at this what then can we save as the book and methodology, and we found that having just collapses in destroyed. Anybody's ability to hope and they just thought they were being diligent to let us know how bad it was could get so we're saying fine. Stay out. Anyway, that's a limit. And so we're just figuring out I mean you know, a bunch of people still want it we just did it wrong in lots of ways which I could go into but there was you know we, we gave the telling the story and building the thing to one guy who's English wasn't very good who's who's was really brilliant, but he wasn't charismatic and nobody followed him and we just did a lot of things wrong. But I think still a local group that wants to understand what's happening, and they want to find local climate action is is the is we have the same goal. It might have worked in the city it's working in Birmingham UK and other places but it didn't for us. A lot of it was user error. So, that's where we are. So, so did you, did you have a specific target or specific goal in mind or was this generic. We wanted to, you know, make this one or no a watershed drive and that is basically our little river that goes from above Black Mountain to it ends into the fringe broad, the Biltmore estate and in Asheville. So just this part of the county. One of the big goals is that one of the poorest neighborhoods is at the foot of the watershed called Shiloh and they got moved to create the Biltmore estate and built more forest which is an exclusive little place. And they're unhealthy and so we're working with things around social determinants of health there and also the unfair taxation and we've got a whole really good project working there. They've been overtaxed by a million and a half wall Biltmore forces been under taxed by four and a half million. But the assessors also kept their evaluations low so nobody can get a second mortgage. And we have folks working on that now or, you know, looking at the health impact and all that kind of stuff. So, have you done anything in food and agriculture. Well, yeah, we've got a watershed fund that is fixing the start is zero interest $10,000 loans to farm to table farmers who are their major customers are these restaurants and so we're talking to the restaurants about doing a benefit dinner. And that, you know, the farmer has to have $10,000 in on tap social capital and the network to become a a borrower. And so we think we can do that pretty easily because, you know, we're a big farm to table place you couldn't do it in Greenville, South Carolina but you can do it here. And, and the restaurants brag about you know I source from them well you know they need. They always need 60 or 80,000 but they always have a $10,000 project and so. And the farmers are having to understand this kind of money they've never seen. So what else do you get now you just give us the $10,000 back it's like well. And what's it cost me well just paying back the money, you know, and three years of trusted relationship, one year of trusted relationship and two years of paying back. And so we think that you know it's a model that can replicate any anywhere you have a viable farm to table culture we think we can. There's some food security angles to that too. But yeah. Who manages that foreground gift. So we get streets which is the CDC that is also managing our community equity fund which is we raise about $3 million into solve the problem of friends and family funding for entrepreneurs black soul proprietors, you know 90% of all black businesses are soul providers never grow to the fourth employee. And so it's because they don't have the right kind of capital CDF eyes are not built to solve the problem that they're built to solve. They're built to the federal so we give them, you know, equity and two, two years of runway and then they pay back revenue show and then they graduate to being TV filings and we were in the county's budget for two years where we've proven to be a low cost job creator. So, you know, they're taking us to scale. So they're also going to manage the, the watershed. I'm just telling the story and doing the community engagement. People have to learn how to give to invest, which is a real cultural thing that makes a lot of sense in Europe and Asia, and it's almost not done here. So what are your, your clients I mean what do you have on the, on the counter that comes up next. So our conference is in February, you know, we're a neighborhood economics in San Antonio with a couple deep local partners. And you know, our goal is, you know, now we, we've got some new staff guy from the local CDFI who built a startup fund for marginalized, you know, folks. But he's left to join us. And so he can do a lot of the practical stuff around my ideas, but then he'll be taken over. He also speaks foundation well, you know, and he talks to institutions and stuff. And I get him in the conversation but I can't, you know, he does like bullet points and tight, you know, lists of things and all that, which is, you know, what I'm not capable of really. And I can engage him with, with a new story but but you know, I feel like curious George when I'm around bullet points like my swing from one and then I hope I make it to the other, but he can he can he can he can do bullet points and they like bullet points. It's not easy to do bullet points. Yeah. Yeah, I have, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I just, I'm just starting a project here in Bend. So with the, with the local citizen climate lobby chapter. So we contacted one of the largest Polaris here and it's a bullpup, worthy point and the owner of that operation is, is quite environmentally oriented so he's going his own hops and he has an herbal garden for his restaurant and things like that. So we, I contacted the case, the grant group that gave me permission to use their film in an abbreviated version, which is like a 45 minutes clip that focuses really on soil health. How do you invite so important, you know, water retention and all of that. So we'll do that. And then I have invited the local soil and water conservation district that have already agreed to to join for a panel discussion and a farmer and a caterer. And then we want to have a conversation or I'm sorry, Jerry, do you have your hand up. I do but I'm happy to wait until you're done with what you're saying. Okay. So, so the idea then is that we have a panel discussion so now we have made you the audience aware and we'll have room for about 100 people or so and we'll really heavily advertise this in the community in Bend. We'll have a discussion where the federal government just put $19.5 billion into the conservation programs, which are not designed to assist farmers to shift into regenerative practices and to build local market places. And so we want to have a discussion where the USDA representative explains the options what is available, not for restaurant operators and caterers, not to apply for not just crayons but also for technical know how, because in order to stitch together a supply chain you need from the farmer, you need an aggregator you need a processor you need logistics and so on. And everything has to be aligned right I mean you have to get menus changed in the restaurant. And that has to be communicated to the farmer and back and forth until you establish a supply demand equation, which then runs across the supply chain so. And it's, it's great that on the one hand that I got this instant interest here in Bend, but what's really nerve is people just don't have a clue I mean they just, they just don't know what this is and why this is right. Jerry, you go. Thank you I don't know it put my hand down automatically after a while I guess. And that that was originally for Kevin and I think is for both of you at this point which is there's Kevin started along with a couple other people, including his wife, Rosalie. The so cap conferences social capital and the tagline for so cap was if I remember properly Kevin where money meets meaning. And it was really interesting because you attracted a bunch of people who were from like banks and normal financial institutions who are kind of scratching around for what's going on in these other funny markets. And then you also had a whole bunch of activists and other people it was a very nice mix, and it feels to me like your whole much of your late career, you've been experimenting with the relationship between money and actual real life and sort of sustainable life conviviality if you want to borrow illicit phrase or something like that like how do we how do we repurpose money in some way. And so I guess my question is, do you have any lessons you can share with us about what have you learned from that quest because you're, you're still on that quest it feels like it's a very deep quest for you and very meaningful. Does it mean, what is, and I'm going to apply my own point of view here, what is corrupting about capitalism that breaks the way money ought to work, and how might it be fixed is it about scale is about ownership as I put in the chat. Is there anything else, and then close it feels like this question comes over to you in the sense of, how do we fix the food system, is it about scale is it about ownership is about Commons. So, I think this is a parallelism in some sense in both of your quests. So, you don't break capitalism at the top, you subvert redlining in your town, you know, it's, you can much more, you know, like Austrian mom always about there's a polycentric way to do it. And you know you can show the county assessor that unfair taxation costs the county a couple million, you know that's what the project with what you know Joe Manacosi which you know and he's really taken things to scale. And we're doing stuff here. So, you subvert redlining where you can, and you can that means you can change valuations, you can change appraisals, and you can get the folks to do it because they make more money doing. So that's just a thing. But the other part is, you know, we really decided a neighborhood focus was the deal because you know your zip code is a greater determiner of your health and your wealth and your mortality than your DNA code. And so we want to build relationships across zip codes in the places we work, helping, you know, affluent folks become effective allies and not inclusive solution scampers. You know, help working with community directed capital is what we're leaving behind after our conference in Jackson. And I can go into it but it's community directed capital is becoming a thing where you don't just make the poor folks fit your theory of change. And you know the poor folks get the siege by more consultants when they get the philanthropic dollars because they have to keep proving themselves a quarter of the way through rather than halfway through. So the cost of the dollars and then they never get 90% of the best philanthropic money is what's called unrestricted operating that just means we trust you you do it. Folks get less than 10% of it. Southwest Hispanic folks that we're working within Texas get less than 10% of it because it's built on relationships and the foundation folks have a relationship with white groups. And actually it becomes 96% of all unrestricted operating in groups working with black youth are white lead that get these grants because they trust black men less. That's what they do. So, so, you know, that's part of that. I'm just looking at how that becomes an evergreen fund that you know where you concessionary investments that are catalytic so I think the big thing is. I helped venture philanthropy not catch on in the US I stopped inviting Acumen fund and new profit and the few venture philanthropy funds and which is giving to invest. I'm a market zealot that I'm I want to show the market work. And when I start working locally I know that philanthropy really matters, and that there are these catalytic foundations who are doing the four things of being catalytic is that you have to understand it's concessionary there's a cost of doing good you can't do good at market rate. You can be patient you can be flexible and you can take a risk and losing some of it is okay. You need, and then affluent folks are starting to follow that kind of model but there's no real grassroots local initiative except one in the country, a thing called abundance capital and Greenville South Carolina which is affluent people, giving to invest that has a return and capital expenditure and their first two deals were a expanding a kitchen for women coming out of the sex trade and capital and go to some scale and a similar thing for women incarcerated manufacturing but you need all the people in the world to learn how to do this to give to invest and realize the money will be coming back and your $5 comes back in four years, and it goes out again and you can actually tag that $5 you can see your money. I'm working there now, but I only announced so this $10 of impact but I only put in five so nobody has the story of this new kind of money so I think it's a real secret tool, and I want to help people figure that out and so that's what I'm working on. Yeah, I'm really conflicted I was in a meeting yesterday, big group meeting hosted by the forum for the future coalition, a whole bunch of NGOs in there. I just had to bring to their attention that you take all farmers markets and all CSA is combined and it's 3% of total market, but yet the energy that goes into this 3% is completely disproportionate with with any potential outcomes There are such wonderful initiatives that you see in communities and it really captures the energy of so many nonprofit groups and local groups. When they start spinning you know it's actually, I mean, maybe I'm just sort of cynical but the Wallace Center, you know, for me funded by the walking family has had this organization that supports the development of local food hubs. And there are food hubs all over the place, and they're funded and two thirds of them lose money and hardly anyone achieves more than maybe a million or two million in sales, and it just concentrates the energy of so many people into doing things that just can't scale. But if Walmart wanted to scale, you know, the these food hubs they would buy from them, you know, they would integrate them into their supply chain but they don't. So they have to develop their own markets and their own outlets and DC SA is that just takes so much effort right but it just, it just has no practical chance of scaling really. And, and so the, I got, you know, I got, I inserted myself with the climate reality project now I'm into this Al Gore presentation there, and that was like in April, and it was like not one word about nature based solutions big administrative ideas and stuff. So I contacted them and they gave me access to their mailing list which is like 96 chapters in North America and I gave him an outline how many organizations are working on stuff already. It's not related to no food and agriculture but also land use issues in broader term, but when you think about land use 80% of our water is used by agriculture. So when you want to talk about land use you have to prioritize what you're looking at right because it's, it's agriculture that is dominating the space right but there's no real focus and discussion on that. And they asked me to the credit asked me to give a no a presentation so the San Antonio chapter invited me to do to do an overview I did that and then they're training director is now they're now developing a training course focused on food and agriculture, and the generative agriculture basic when they asked me to develop an introduction clip for this I shot a 15 minute video and a PowerPoint to introduce the topic, and I wanted to put in as much shock value, you know, as, as I could. Take the screen for a moment I can just take your five minutes here to show you some slides that I did here. Let me see a little slide show. So, so this is why food is the next frontier and climate, and you have basically two options you know you have you have energy which everybody understands and you have photosynthesis, which is really nature based solutions which you know 80% of water. Now it's being used for food production for agriculture and. Yeah, so, so then here's the deal climate connection is basically saying that no absent any dietary changes. There are no evolutionary changes in dietary patterns or agricultural production practices. We're going to fly right by the 1.5 degrees Celsius ceiling which we're going to do anyways. And on my computer just falls up. Food, and this is really this came new so so I got into an argument with with one of the climate reality guys. They wanted to claim 11% contribution to emissions to later to agriculture as a okay that's a correct number but you're missing the picture here you're missing apples with oranges, because when you look at you have to look at food as a system because you can separate storage and packaging transportation month thousands of miles and so in all these other things, you know, form from this list here so on top of it 40% of our food is wasted so now comes to recognition that one third of global emissions are directly linked to the food system. And the reason this is important is because you're allocating capacity, not to where the biggest problems are, and we haven't we talk about land use about trees right, which is great but it's not really addressing the core issue yet. And chemical contamination I mean everybody knows what a mess that is right. It's personal health issues because chemicals are penetrating the food supply getting into our body. It's our 50% of our watersheds are polluted and so on and so on. 60% of our health care bill is directly linked to to nutrient deficient diet. So to miss that focus on soil health now why is soil health so important 50 to 70% of of carbon has been depleted from soils. People don't realize that I mean this is serious stuff right 25% of global emissions up in the in the atmosphere come from decarbonizing soil. I mean that's, you know, forget the transportation center, you know here it is, and then conversely the IPCC is now saying we could, we could sequester 1.85 gigatons of carbon each year, if we go to scale on shifting into regenerative practices. And that you could do that for 20 to 40 years. So here you know the these chemicals that they're using is trying out the soil, and then you try out the soil it loses its capacity to hold water. So you have millions of square miles of land mass former class lands and what have you that have that are tried out and they're disrupting the water cycle. So the amount of local rain typically comes from the from the trend evapotranspiration, you know, whereas the moisture in the soil evaporates and rains back down. So then here, healthy soil, 1% increase in organic matter gives you 20,000 gallons storage capacity per acre. 40 to 10% of organic matter in healthy soil is a massive volumes of water. When you think California 34 million acres of farmland right. I mean 1% increase you have millions of acre feet of water. So where to engage pathways to market now, you know, somehow you need to you need to engage the market to work to partner with the customer. The Institute of America, the Miss Harvard, the menus of change, you know, the bio regions concept we talked about that, you know, that is like think of Europe as bio regions, and how Christians have evolved over time, not to specialize into you know, German and Japan and Greece and so on into bio regions what can be produced generation after generation time after time now. And so USDA is starting to help, you know, with very specific local market development programs they're funding it. The corporations are telling us they're going to do it. Of course, not much has happened yet. But, but I mean, the understanding is there it's just like with the oil industry the understanding is there that we need to shift now but it's not it's not happening. So farmers lead and so on. So anyway, I just wanted to run you through this I laid the foundation there to to directly approach everyday consumers and people who are not familiar, you know, with the issues at large, just to to just to get there the 4 per 1000 initiative girl is doing great. They have really gone global with that because the United Nations, they were a key factor in the 2021 United Nations food system summit. And the European Union has embraced the farm to table, they're calling it farm to fork coming out of this so for the 1000 is doing great. Jerry. Plus I'm interrupt for a second, as just arrived, and I'm going to drop off but Gil or Pete can I pass the contact either of you are you going to be here for the rest of the call. I'm not sure I will. So maybe not me. Gil. I'm working on a plumbing problem in my kitchen. Oh my gosh, do somebody else. Sure, I'll take it. Excellent. And let me just unplug my ear but let me put a strong for a second. Come over. Okay. Hello everybody what a wonderful. You know, reunion or something great. Jerry and I are here together, which is really nice. Good to see you all, but I don't want to interrupt so. No worries, we're going to sit and talk, and I will pass the con. Thanks. Sorry to remind us or we're going to, well, my friend didn't never mind. But is this is this kind of information too much. I mean, when you when you think about your community and your audience, how would something like this play. It would probably scare him. Is that a good saying. I don't think so. I think people are already afraid and therefore petrified and are not moving and if you come in and you scare him more. They will have shut down so I don't, you know, I'm more interested in the what if we got it right parts of things and where the system can be moved and where their inflection points and you know Danela Meadows. I have zero interest in hearing how it's not going to work. But if you can find the inflection point where the system could be moved I'm interested. So that's just me, you know, when you talk about this doesn't work this doesn't work and that's a bland alley. Well then, I don't need to hear about blind allies I want to hear where there's a chink in the wall. So that's, I have zero patients for blind alley conversations. You know you end up in a blind alley. It seems there are several parts of the presentation and they can be dialed up or down for different audiences. Yeah, you do want to do them in fear and you should. Well let me just say there's there's like one part that like things are really things really shitty and in big trouble and getting worse that's one part second is the diagnosis of why it is that way, which starts to point you to what the leverage points are. And then third is here's what people are doing, you know, in places like yours are all around the world that are actually working and contributing and making progress and fourth is okay what are we going to do here. And yeah, and you dial those pieces up and down based on the audience you're in some people need to really get hit over the head. Yeah, your guys don't they need to know like what's working and how can we apply that here. Classes a great presentation but you know to Kevin's point valving what's right for what audience make it would really crank it up a bunch I think. Yeah, I'm not going to show the introduction part of this presentation to my group here in Bend, you know, I'm going to start at menus of change. I mean, because here they're showing the showing the film case to crown which is all positive and you know, healing the soil and so on and so on and then say okay, let's do this but here's what it takes to do it. Yeah, and you know I'm personally I'm just figuring out how you know I did it wrong one time we did a lot of things right but you know, people didn't want to tool get they put together they want to be guided and you can have deep I think the circles model around conversations. From that book, you know what then can we say, and from the other woman who's doing that. That book is what if we get it right. I just, we have a real small window that we need to like not be angry and be smart. You've got Doug you got your hand raised for something. Yeah, I was, I'm curious what whether you guys could point in the direction of things that have been sort of farmer directed for farmers that are in the current system. You know that are currently. You know, part of the of the old paradigm and frame. And what kinds of things farmers are my experience with farmers I'm in Southwest Michigan, which is farm, you know, very much farm territory, and farmers are sort of a breed apart, especially multi generational, you know, like, they're a unique species. And, and, and I tend to worry in around these kinds of centers of gravity through a constituency lens like who are all the constituent players at the table, but unconditional love applied. Each constituent need to feel loved in the way they want to be loved like, what is each constituent need to receive the information that you ideally would like them to receive. And, and that can change really dramatically depending upon who you're talking to. And I'm, I'm sort of. I'm sitting in the middle of a lot of connectivity to a lot of farm folk and the suppliers and the chemical providers and the fertilizer providers and the, you know, the truckers and logistics people and heavy equipment people, you know, but at the belly of that beast or the farmers themselves. I have two quick answers, you know, one, we're in a not common farm to table place that's also got a gentle climate and so a lot of farmers have moved in to be farmers here or had a theory of earth or whatever, and they're becoming viable. So that's, you know, so we're working on that, you know, the store gratitude that they have in the network that can result in 10,000 they can start a habit and then the people who have done that will also they will have given to invest and so we want to talk to them about helping to understand their experience and so it'll be popular because it's, you know, it's a benefit dinner, you know, from a farm that supplies well. And it's listed on the menu, you know, in these restaurants. We're also working with equal plates, which does the same kind of meals to folks who can't afford those restaurants and so they serve them to head starts and, you know, senior centers and they'll be a very brief presentation in there and we want people to give in addition to the folks who can't be at the scale, you know, there's always, you know, a little bit more liberal guilt, you can melt out of the fragile environmentalists who come, who care about food systems, and getting them to actually care about something other than the climate is, is, you got to make it quick and not make it out of that too long. Another thing that I helped with was helping region Illinois, get into a hospital system with regenerative oats, and we had a Miller, who could do it at scale. And there was enough supply, but then it took about five years going through this hospital, because you know they had to see that at work and then they had to do test gardens that at work and then they had to do testing with the nutritionist that at work and then they had to do testing in the lab that at work and then they had to go. It was like, all the labs had to see, you know, the real stuff and regenerative oats is really healthier and you had to buy a 200,000 oats steamer to bring that to scale. And so, you know, the enterprise penetration, you know, you need, as I put it in our system, you need a system on the road is needing all the stakeholders and partners together and stakeholders are those you want to move and partners are the ones who are helping you do it. And knitting those together, but then the mother hen role where there was one woman who just lived in the nutrition lab and all the labs, you know, to make each scientist move the project faster a little bit more and to figure out what you know, so five years was really short, you know, because she was working every angle but she needs somebody with that kind of patients who can go to see the same people moving them and so you can do that shit but it's it's it's a heavy lifting and you need a system entrepreneur, you know, you need, you know, an anchor institution who wants to move there, and will make more money doing it because eating healthier keeps you out of the emergency room and all those sorts of things that anchor hospitals are doing. So it's a real system play link to the farm link to, you know, the next thing is ground beef and they're working on ground beef, but the easiest results. So anyway, that's what those are my two experiences. Thanks. Yeah I just posted a webinar that I was doing in partnership also with the movie maker from farm free or die. So they are some some really specific references farmers speaking know in this in this clip here. So what we have I mean, I've had the farmers on the panel that have like 10,000 acres right I mean big farmers and progressive. They're all worried about losing their soil. I mean they realize that this is the soil goes their farm goes. So that's the starting point. You know, and then you say okay so what does it take to to repair your soil because the word regenerate and by this became dominant is because what beyond sustainable. Right, it's not you can't sustain what we have right now because it's already highly degraded. So you have to repair and regenerate your soil and hear the steps to do this. But then the farmer goal in this movie farm free or died is a very specific reference. One lady farmer is talking about how much money it costs for them to change out the equipment. I mean they have millions of dollars of stuff, you know, sitting on those farms. And so they need help with that and they say why would we pay, you know, to repair your water shit. Why should this come out of my pocket I'm willing to do it, but you don't have a better pay me for it so that's sort of what farmers are saying right. So, right now you have the US government the inflation reduction act put no $20 billion into the conservation programs for specifically that reason of course the Republicans want to kill it and take it back out. I mean that's the insanity of our time. But so then the other thing that that is promising but yet not explored our carbon markets, because if you can pay farmers for the for the sequestration of carbon into the soil. Then you have the incentive right if you pay him upfront through grants to buy equipment and put in cover crops and so on. That's one thing but then you can reward them not through carbon markets, where you get an X amount of money per ton of carbon sequester. And none of the this is all potential. Now this could all happen but it's not yet. Okay, Stuart I'm sorry we have kept you waiting here. No worries. One, I want to really salute both of you guys kudos for being on the ground and on the front lines with this. If you think about this is a war. In some ways you guys are really on the front lines and it's, you know, it's just beautiful to hear and watch. One of the things that struck me as you were, as you were talking was the importance of getting a large food purveyors to get on to get on board in in some way, and it brought to mind. A couple that I met many years ago, who believe it or not were selling helicopters. Large corporations. And what they came to realize was that they were, you know, 1520 different entities that had to deal with to get decisions made. And so they developed a whole system to move large corporate entities into actual systems into decisions. I was just wondering I was wondering where the where the hold up is in the large corporations, is it at the top level, you know, where is it is that nobody wants to make decisions about shifting. And then as I was, as I was waiting to, to just to throw this out to find out where the bottleneck is. I started to think about, you know, so corporations are, you know, financed by banks and shareholders and, and, you know, the importance of getting that piece into the chain and in terms of, you know, large philanthropists, creating a bank of progressive thinking people to help finance things and move things along I'm just, I'm just rambling a little bit now but any, any thoughts about what I just said. Yeah, Kevin you want to go. No I have no thoughts about what he just said it's not my space. The phenomenon in the food business is the same as in the oil industry. You know, do you have the equivalency of the cook brothers who own. I mean think about, let's just take McDonald's right 34,000 restaurants, always the same menu. They want to have that potato. Precisely, you know, corn to their specifications. It's a, it's a poisonous mess that they're creating with this it's a GMO potato that requires massive chemical intervention to go and so you, but if you were to change their potato, you know, if you were to tell them, you know, you're going to have to coin this thing it's killing, you know, everything around it because you have to douse it with insecticides and herbicides and, you know, and then put in no phosphates and not in synthetic nitrogen is just kills everything that you go to Idaho. My God, there's no it's a wasteland. There are millions of Vegas there. But for them to change that potato they would have to to change the aggregation practices. Right if you say let's do you guys grow potatoes that are conducive to your bio system right to your bio region. There are many different types of potatoes right I mean this potato goes really well in cold climates. This potato does better in hot climate so if you call potatoes that are conducive to the to the soil and to the bio region. Then now McDonald's has to start aggregating potatoes that are different. The entire processing system collapses. Right. So these large restaurant chains and catering organizations have to would have to regionalize their production centers. You know they would have to build regional kitchens or processing centers to supply, you know, a group of restaurants. So it is, it is very disruptive and which is why they're fighting it that that just don't want to deal with it and it's. You know that legislation. I mean you have states, you know, who are going anti ESG, you know, environmental sustainability goals, who have anti ESG legislation coming in. Now where they penalize anybody who wants to invest in companies that are openly stated we are we are pro pro environmental regulations and stuff. So there is, I mean there is a perversion that has been built into the system, not a pathology that you can't get out without really changing the whole damn system. You just described two blind alley scenarios one, you know with the big ag and the other with given stewards questions have you found some places where there's leverage points to change the system that's possible. But don't do another blind alley scenario. Yeah, no, I mean we know the way out. Right. And we need to have people become activist enough to understand what the issues are so this is a talent. Everybody, not everybody needs to be in this fight. So when I go and talk to my local restaurant owners and so on. I don't mention that stuff, you know that. But when you are talking with people who are into political activism or into lobbying and talking to the economy you got to know this stuff you have to hold your congress person and your senator accountable. Right. That means you have to know. Yeah. Is there a model for doing soil regeneration one acre at a time. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You have farmers who may have 10,000 acres and they take aside, maybe a 50 acre plot to experiment. No, that's that's absolutely happening. And then you have small scale farmers who and we are really wanting to encourage small scale farmers, you know, 345 acre farmers to be multi crop. Let's come down to suburban living and the houses with a suburban garden. That's maybe half an acre. Is there a procedure there to regenerate that soil. Yes, then when you go on USDA website, there's urban agriculture. And it's a big thing and it's going like crazy Kevin would probably know more about it. Yeah, you know, there's a farm here that is in five yards. And she does regenerative food production in those yards and is sourcing from them. She's trying to raise money to make a farm but she's got a really viable business leasing yards and managing them extremely efficiently. I think she has, she's published some books RODD why I forget the name of her farm on how to look at your land and and how to do what what she's done she's she's really smart and can. Yeah, I think she's got a lot of potential to guide people into, you know, food forest production or food net food forest networks in your yards. I think during World War two 40% of us folks and vegetables came from what was it called a big victory gardens right 40% during that time so it's absolutely you could scale that if people get it right if people understand this. This could scale in a really short period of time. I'm needing to go in about five minutes if anybody has anything for me or otherwise I'll just listen. One of the things that's pretty obvious in your presentations is the money system remains in place. Is that a stumbling block. Well, you know you have to change what you do with capital and how you think about money. I mean, you know, individually and collectively, you know, I mean that this giving to invest is a major force that is scaling from Asia and Europe and you can you can point to one active fund domestically here. We're called new profit. So I think there is, you know, donor advice funds local investing locally, I think as a real good replicable model there's only one of those. And it takes a lot of hand holding and some expertise that's local, you know, but I think it's it's it's like everything they've done is so powerful in that one town and they're another coming up here as people are seeing it and the big hospital foundation said yeah bring that up here and we'll do social determinants of health stuff. I think, I think, to me, collective local bio regional climate change response is the only way we're going to survive and re re jiggering the capital system is part of that and starting to care about everybody in the watershed as part of that. There's holes everywhere. Yeah, but Kevin just mentioned is basically the what what we refer to as the social economic impact of decisions and it's just astounding to see how how decisions are being made without really respecting the social economic consequences, you know what does this do to I mean why do we have food deserts it's basically because no one pays attention to the base of pyramid economy, you know, do these people have access to affordable fresh food and what would it take to make this work. So I think, you know, Kevin is right in saying that the social economic issues are actually going to be dominant, not to make this work to turn this. Yeah they're not going to stay down the hill is climate change happens you know they're they're going to threaten the gated communities will discover you know that the gate is just an interesting piece of iron. Yeah, do you guys see that see you know the work on the ground that you're doing. Going viral in any way that is actually going to change the, you know, the projection that we're on. Yeah, I have an actual real answer to that. Some things will be viral and are easily replicable and some things replicate replicate as ecosystem replication that's deeply socially constructed. You know we're working with the Aspen Institute and other big dogs whatever they were in the room with them now with a project we've been working with. There were four projects and this is the one that's easily scaling. And that's the guy converting black strip malls may just call them black wall streets to local ownership and keeping it away from predatory hedge fund displacement and then kicking out the dirty dollar stores and trying to find a decent local business to build it up. And he works and he's done it four times in Chicago and Baltimore to each, and my family's invested in him and he's the most easily easily templatable of any of the things that's out there really. There's a couple things that you know fit a certain kind of capital that are also like that that equity part that would let black owner black business owners by their building because CDF eyes don't don't give loans to people that need them that don't really need them. So it's the equity part that helps them become, you know, asset owner so, you know, crowdfunding commercial elements in commercial real estate is a really big thing is, you know, in Baltimore one of the things that made it work was they got 1000 people engaged and then the people walking by, and then the hedge fund folks came around deeply connected, you know, from the other part of town, but the city council was out front saying, I'm behind my 1000 people in fact I'm leading them right now. You know, and so, you know, you can get political cover if you get a lot of voters engaged in owning the block. So things like that can grow. That's the easiest one that can grow, but lots of things grow the way watershed restoration grows, you know, it's a whole complex of factors that needs to be socialized and you need to find where's the anchor institution that, you know, could make make money save money hospital university government you never leads you got in front of where government wants to solve problem and then they will give you money to scale but don't ever ask government to lead to change because it just they won't and you'll be stuck and it's wrong but you know they're funding our community equity fund that's solving friends and family funding for sole proprietors to become job creators because we've become a reliable low cross job creator so they're, they're jumping out in front and saying we're so happy, you know, but the government can bring things to scale that you know, once you prove it works. So, anyway, grow as complex contagion. Linears is one of the things that's a template get lots of places. So, so would you guys, would you categorize the work that you're doing in some way as a parallel process that hopefully, at some point in time will become the more dominant process because those large purveyors that are killing things. We'll see that there is no alternative as people stop. Using what they're providing. A quick answer to that and I was talking to a guy who runs a refugee resettlement center in Thailand yesterday so how do you keep hope alive. You know, there's 90 of them refugees in your town and nobody wants them. And we said, you know, Brian Stevenson who does the justice project in Alabama, he says, what he does is he doesn't focus on the horizon he focuses on what's proximate and what can happen. There's some version of a serenity prayer, you know, courage to change the things you can and don't do the things you can't do. And so, you know, when someone you talk about how do you make the big thing move. You know, you, you can change the economy of a neighborhood but I can't imagine how to change the economy of a country so, you know, a country is built up a lot of neighborhoods then you get regional. And I think you can uproot things from below a lot easier, you know, you can find ways to subvert redlining and change the economy. But you know, questions about how, how will this get big and looking at big it's just I don't look there I wouldn't. If you only see a blind alley there then stop looking there looking places where there's not blind allies, you know, look where there's leverage points. Yeah, I avoid that question. Great. No, it's also the admonition of do what you can where you are with your have. Yeah. Thanks. But there's also, you know, another thought process here. I compare this a little bit, you know, in like a minute was in Tanzania watching the great migration right so you have all the wildebeest and seabass running over back and forth trying to figure out how to cross this. This river that's full of really big crocodiles, and they can make up that they just keep running back and forth and back and forth until one finally decides no small group and then from the whole thing goes. So we are on the precipice of people wanting action because the coming climate change is now so obvious and it's just a matter of time until we lose a city right I mean the oceans are so heated up I mean the next storm system system coming through the Gulf of Mexico may take out right I mean the we are really, you know, one fraction away from from a major catastrophe someplace. And so when that happens, people will look to act right and then then you say so what do you, and then the risk is, you know that they make things worse because if you don't have a plan, if you don't have, you know, a sufficient alignment across a broad spectrum of people from all walks of life that now he has agriculture, and we're destroying the ecosystem the only way to to keep us going here is to come to harmonize ourselves to realign ourselves with the biosphere because we're part of it and and and so. And so to make that knowing, you know, more widespread, you know, without, you know, just just make it understood. And then when when panic breaks out we know which direction to run. So that's sort of what I'm trying to to to build, you know, is a groundwork of understanding. It's just where my thinking has been the cat the catastrophe that that motivates people. You mentioned victory gardens earlier, something pulling people forward in a larger way. Yeah. I'm more interested in a farmer using six yards than I am in victory gardens. And then making viable products out of that I think that that's a pretty interesting thing I she's pretty remarkable and I don't know if that's really you know how replicable her model is would be interesting to explore. It seems to me that we want to have both large projects and small ones, and we shouldn't talk down either. That's completely right I just don't you know, we've now hired a guy who speaks institution and he can do a lot of things that I can't do. Absolutely. We totally should. Yeah. So we wanted to leave you on the high note, how are we going to do that. Let's take your and start digging. Yeah, I think it's happening, you know, that's all I think, is anybody else afraid that deal is going to reach out from that picture and grab you. That picture is always. Oh, yeah, I know an inspiration. Be hopeful. And on hope in the Guardian is really super good right now and she's got about 100,000 comments or something. And she said hope is a resilient strategy, you know, and doom is a is a self fulfilling strategy. Whenever I hear the word hope I think of John and Macy and you know active hope as being absolutely essential to sitting around in prayerful hope, you know, so what. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we have exhausted the topic heavily. Very good. Good, thank you. I mean, we're obviously doing things that are good at different scales and you know I respect the scale at which you work it's it's you know, I get kind of paranoid when I have to be around all the grownups and stuff like that you have to be with. So I work better on the edge. Thanks. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, I'll be saying goodbye. Yeah, it looks that way it looks like we, we, we are. I have the baton so I'm speaking okay. Whatever that means. But it sounds like we're finished for today Pete said you need to leave early and classes ready to go. So, we can just sit and reflect on on what we've heard today. Share mine is just everything that was said is just kind of validating for where my own thinking is so I appreciate listening to the discussion. Yeah, thank you. Thank you also for allowing us to do this. Yeah. Okay, bye bye. Have a good week everybody. Thank you.