Episode #180
JM Fortier Interviews Dave Chapman

Welcome! You can subscribe and download episodes of our show through your favorite podcast app.

You can also subscribe to receive the video version of each episode on our YouTube channel.

Our transcript of JM interviewing Dave has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Or stream the audio-only version here:
 

JM Fortier interviews Dave Chapman, Spring 2024 :

Dave Chapman 0:00
The speed, the rapidity with which regenerative became this thing… and of course, there are lots of people who just wanted an alternative to what they saw as a degraded organic standard. And, and I have to take responsibility, because I’ve been one of the biggest mouths, saying that there are problems with organic. And there are, but I did not come to destroy organic, I come to save it. If we said, “You know what, screw it. I’m done with organic. I’m going regenerative.” Well, good luck with that, because that word’s already lost. For what you mean by it, and what I would mean by it, it’s gone. It’s gone. It’s (now) so you’ve got to keep coming up with a new word. And they’re getting so good at it. It’s basically, the moment that you start to get some, some cultural embrace of what you’re doing, they go “Oh, good. We’re with them.” We can’t outrun them. You know, there are serious, serious forces at play here. And we won’t outrun them and we won’t out trick them. And we are going to have to stand and fight.”

Linley Dixon 1:15
Welcome to The Real Organic Podcast. I’m Linley Dixon, co director of the Real Organic Project. We’re a grassroots, farmer-led movement with an add-on organic food label to distinguish organic crops grown in healthy soils, and organic livestock raised on well-managed pasture. Today’s episode is a big pivot for us, as we’re actually sharing an episode from another podcast. Our friend – farmer, author and television star, JM Fortier began his own show this past spring called The Market Gardener Podcast and co director Dave Chapman was his very first guest. So we hope you enjoy and take some time to explore the other episodes that JM and his team have put together. Otherwise, we’ll be back to it next week with another great interview from the organic movement.

JM Fortier 2:07
Hey, today’s a very special guests, somebody that I really like; Dave Chapman from the Real Organic Project. And it’s going to be an interesting session because I know Dave, that you’re a great, not a history explainer, but kind of like setting the stage for what’s going on, what happened. And obviously a lot of people that have been following my work and recently, Chris, a we’ve been coming coming strong with with this message of you know, fighting back against corporate takeover of organics. That’s right. So that’s really why you’re here. So welcome to the show.

Dave Chapman 2:42
Thank you, JM. So, so happy to be here.

JM Fortier 2:45
I’ve become a bit more vocal because of you. And because I really care about it, about not just what happened, but like the bigger picture. And you’re obviously somebody that I love to talk to, because it always makes it clearer for me and I’m getting more.. getting more conscious about this aligns me more more with my actions. Like it reminds me of why I wanted to farm and why I’m still involved in farming. It feels that, it feels good to be kind of fighting something. Yeah, it brings me energy to be, I’ve always been a rebel. So just like the fact that we’re, yes, we’re promoting something. And yes, we’re doing it with enthusiasm. But we’re, we’re fighting bad guys. In a way.

Dave Chapman 3:32
Organic has always been an insurgency, it always has been. And, you know, it’s people say, Well, we shouldn’t be defined by fighting against something. But what it is that we genuinely are fighting against is huge. It’s so powerful. And it does need to be fought against it doesn’t mean we do need to create it, we can say it more positively. We’re creating the alternative. We’re creating the positive path. But we shouldn’t we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that this is going to be easy. We are up against the dominant economic model that that rules our world, which is the food system and all the money around it. Yeah. So yeah, this is a big deal. You know, you talk about you know, we need to think bigger. I was in California, maybe last summer, and I was driving around and I just visited Paul Hawken, who is a wonderful, been a wonderful supporter of Real Organic and his words to me. I spent the night he says, Dave, you know, you got to think bigger. And I thought, Geez, I thought we were already thinking pretty big. But I thought, Okay, what does that mean? Because I really respect Paul. And I’m driving and I get a call from from Hugh Kent, one of our our great farmers that is now on our executive board. And he said, Dave, I’ve been thinking about it, we need to think bigger, and I go okay, No. And so what does that mean? And I’ve been thinking about that ever since. And and trying to understand because it’s absolutely correct. And so what is thinking bigger? I have a lot of answers for that. But you know, what we do is so beautiful in and of itself, you go to a small farm. And you go, this is right. Yeah, you smell it, you taste it. Right? You feel it, your body feels good. Everything about it resonates. But what is that? What are the implications of that to a bigger society that we all live in? And many people never, ever will get the chance to go to a small farm. And yet they eat every day? And what do they eat? And what’s the impact of that? My own kids right now, actually, my daughter’s at home working on the farm. But she lived in Hawaii for years. My son lives in San Diego. They were living urban lives. They weren’t going to farms to get their food. They weren’t part of CSA. Yeah. So they were going to the supermarket, maybe Whole Foods, maybe another to get their food. What were they getting? Yeah. Not not the food that they really wanted. And not the food that most people who go to the store and buy organic, they’re losing their choices, they’re not gaining more choices. So how do we change that? Yeah, I know. That’s what you’re working on.

Speaker 1 6:29
We’re gonna circle back to all of this. Yeah, I think that’s you just set the stage perfectly. But to set it for our listeners. Can you also explain real quick, just what is the Real Organic Project? Guys that don’t know? Sure.

Dave Chapman 6:41
Sure. Okay, so very briefly, I have been an organic farmer for a long time, I don’t know 42 years or something. Since since I was very young, and and I’m not young anymore. And in that time, when I started organic was truly the Rebel Alliance. When we started. USDA hated us. We there was no respect, actually, even in the marketplace, organic didn’t even exist. And it was really a group of young hippies, not just hippies, there were there were people from the country, you know, farmers who are whose kids were going, we got a different idea mom and dad, maybe we do this differently. There were strong Christian fundamentalists who said, food is really important. We don’t believe in the system. So it was a very mixed group. But a lot of young people coming out of the Vietnam War going, No, we have to do this in a different way. And we have to do everything in our lives a different way. Not just food, but it’s got to include food to the guy I learned from Jake guest, the first guy who taught me organic farming. He He came from a commune. And he had gone to Dartmouth College. And he and a bunch of students went out and lived on a very funky farm. And he said, Well, we decided we should grow our own food. And I thought a bunch of kids at an Ivy League school decided that they should grow their own food and 1968. Like what inspired that, but it was part of the, of the vibe that we needed to do everything differently and think differently. So food was a big part, right from the get go. And I liked it because actually, I’m not so great at protest marches and stuff. I like political action of growing food and feeding people I care about that felt completely right. The thing I’ve come to believe since then, is yeah, we’re gonna need some protests marches to. So we were doing well, organic movement was growing. My second teacher was Eliot Coleman. I was very fortunate to live not that far from Eliot, and he shared his awesome mind and his experience and his amazing library. And so I got, I got a amazing education, just sheer luck, serendipity. And organic was growing. And then the USDA came in, and I agreed with Eliot and I thought it was a mistake.

JM Fortier 9:15
And then you became a really successful organic greenhouse tomato grower. Yeah, all these years also. Yes. Right. So you were deeply you know, you were a farmer deeply involved in growing selling marketing. Like you were writing that organic wave if I can say, Yeah, your business was thriving. Yes, you you know your kids grew up on the farm, you you paid for their education with, you know, the farm.

Dave Chapman 9:41
The farm was a viable business. We figured out how to do that. And it evolved to we started as a very mixed vegetable roadside stand. It was before this before we had invented CSAs. I went to the farmers market twice a week and we had a stand And, and it worked. And we were very mixed vegetable with cauliflower and feel duck perennials and, you know, some berries, but but mostly vegetables. And eventually that evolved and it was because of those kids. Yeah. Because, you know, I tried the first year we had my son and I don’t know how people do it. I lost money that year. Yeah. Right, because I was trying to also be a dad to this baby. And well, we all know anyone who’s been through that knows that’s an innate, amazing challenge. Because they both take so much. They almost take all of you both raising a young child and also running a young farm.

JM Fortier 10:44
Yeah, it’s like having twins farm and having twins, etc.

Dave Chapman 10:49
And one of them is like Godzilla. So I evolved into a greenhouse operation so that I could hold a crew year round. And, and I saw that there was a great appreciation from customers who really loved the tomato. So that’s what we did. We started to phase out of the fields. And so that I could also have enough time in my life for the kids and and more of a balanced life than one that had such peaks and valleys. And that worked. And we made it work. And we became primarily wholesale. And we wholesale tomatoes all over. And and yeah, so it’s a real farm. And I don’t know, there’s probably about just to give people a sense of scale, we have about two and a half acres now mostly glass greenhouse from Holland. And we grow in the soil, of course, we’re really organic. And it’s completely doable. In in the rest of the world, organic greenhouses are all in the soil. In the US. Now, that’s changed quite a lot. And we can talk about that a lot. But as we saw that before we saw that change. I saw, even though the USDA had come in and was now in charge of defining organic, they had a good definition. The organic food production Act was a good law. And I said I was wrong. I thought that this wasn’t going to work. But it was working very well. When was that? The the law passed around 1990. Okay, and it took a decade before the USDA got involved as they slowly and painfully created the National Organic Program. So around 2001, I think is when the National Organic Program really stepped in and said, this is this is these are the standards for organic certification. And we already had our own certification in Vermont, Vermont organic farmers. And the standards were the same. That was NOFA. That was NOFA out of NOFA. A group of farmers and I was one of those created a group to certify ourselves. Okay, that was the Vermont organic farmers, which was NOFA Vermont.

JM Fortier 12:58
And was what was it at that time that kind of like every area region had their own kind of sits right in agency, and it was kind of run by farmers.

Dave Chapman 13:08
That’s right, Maine had MOFGA Yeah, and really early ones were Maine California had certified California certified organic farmers which we will call CC o f that’s what that stands for. And and Vermont they were all about the same time and they got started there was barely any market just I mean we can you know for young people now they can’t even imagine that you go to the store there was nothing organic in a store people were buying it for their food coop and back then the food coops didn’t have stores they were food clubs where people would buy some organic grain and some organic cheese and chop it up in somebody’s somebody’s you know back room and put it in boxes so it’s kind of like an early CSA that bought from different farms and

JM Fortier 13:59
we’re not talking about the 1800s No we’re talking we’re talking about like 30 years ago yeah

Dave Chapman 14:03
night when 1990 Something like that. Yeah, and that’s when I came to Vermont we did that I was in a food coop Yeah. And that’s what we it was nice. You go you know chop up the food chop up the cheese with your neighbors

JM Fortier 14:15
and everyone would share the same ethos.

Dave Chapman 14:18
Everybody believed the same stuff. Everybody wanted good food. Everybody want organic food. We’re all trying to figure out what did that mean even what does it mean to have organic food and and it was beautiful these these conversations? And then we started the certification. Same thing conversations every year, all the farmers would get together for an annual meeting, we bring our bag lunch. And we argue about Well, should we allow this practice to be called organic and and that’s how we evolved the standards and sometimes it was rough and tumble. And sometimes it was just very easy, but

JM Fortier 14:54
it was bottom up.

Dave Chapman 14:56
It was all about us farmers on the grass completely farmer led there was nobody else, right? We were doing it. And and I would say, overall, it had greater integrity than what goes on now. And even though now there’s tons of regulation, and many layers to it, I think the actual trustworthiness, there was fraud. There was always like some jerk. Yeah, it was gonna go and buy some conventional carrots. Yeah. And call them organic. And, you know, they would get caught. And they got, you know, you’re out of here. Yeah. But and there’s still fraud, but mostly not in both cases, mostly not. The difference is that now, there’s this egregious fraud sometimes allowed by the government. And sometimes not, I mean, you know, there’s grain fraud, that’s just, it’s literally the mob. Right. It’s the Eastern European mob, the Turkish mob. dangerous people who are buying serious quantities of conventional grain, and faking the certification and calling it organic, shipping it over. They dump it on the market, it depresses the price. And, and bad things happen for everybody. Bad things happen for the American grain farmers, Canadian grain farmers, because their price goes way down. And they’re growing the real stuff.

JM Fortier 16:22
Okay.

Unknown Speaker 16:23
Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna jump in,

JM Fortier 16:25
jump in. And then I’ll jump in.

Speaker 1 16:28
This is all really good, I think for especially a lot of young people to hear, because I think right now, people just take organic for granted. A lot of people do like they don’t realize how much that was a shift in the culture. Because we see because we’re, we have our social media and everything like a lot of young people, they just why would I use pesticides, they don’t even because they never really knew the alternative, like they want to farm for instance. So I love hearing the history. I wanted to bounce back to the moment in time that the USDA takes it over. Because before that it’s farmer led bottom up. But then when the USDA takes it, I’ve heard Jeff Moyer say before how that gave away, not only continuous improvement, but like the autonomy of it. And so now, instead of continuously improving standards, it’s actually continuously D proving standards. Yes. And it’s just seems like that’s the first moment at which it starts to take a downturn. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I

Dave Chapman 17:25
would agree that that actually what happened is that was the moment it started to stop being a movement. That’s an important distinction. Because suddenly, we at first, we still had the annual meeting. And then we realized, what are we meeting for? Because we can’t decide anything? And it was like the light went out of our eyes a little bit. Now. We were all becoming commercial farmers. Yeah. Right. We were figuring out how to make a living and grow this very good food. So I would say okay, it was evolving into a business for each farmer. They had their farm business, and they were trying to figure out how to make enough money to feed their family, raise their kids have a car to drive, pay the taxes, all of that. And that’s not a bad thing. Yeah, that’s, that’s a good thing. And I believe I was just having this conversation with Eliot Coleman as we were driving here, about the early days of the organic movement when it was in England when it was the Soil Association, right. Yeah. And this interesting conversation, basically, between Patrick Holden and Lady Eve bow for Lady Eve was a peer of Albert Howard’s and she wrote the living soil. And she was great. She’s a great, you know, thinker and writer and farmer. And she had real doubts about setting standards, like, you will you kill Will you kill it, and having it turned into a business. And Patrick was a young guy, who was idealistic, and he was becoming an organic dairy farmer, but he also needed to make a living. And Lady Eve came from a more privileged background. And so they had this conflict. And she was afraid that when it turned into a business, it would get twisted. And he was afraid if it didn’t turn into a business, it would never replicate and become more than just anecdotal. That’s right, become actually the dominant way food is grown, which is the goal. And I just want to say I think they were both right. So that’s an important thing. They both had a really good point. And no matter which we do, we have to guard for the failures of that. So obviously, Patrick’s way became the dominant way. And you know, Lady Eve ultimately acknowledged that this should happen. But we have to then realize that any economic enterprise eyes, that starts to succeed on a wide scale is going to become almost irresistible to large corporate forces, the moment I say corporate forces, it’s like, okay, your brain just turned off. But what I’m talking about is large economic players in any arena,

JM Fortier 20:21
like that would be a big farm, or a big distribution hub, or a big mark supermarket or a big lobby, all of

Dave Chapman 20:28
the above all of the above. So that’s what’s important to know, we’re talking about the food system. We’re not just talking about agriculture, about what’s grown in the field. Because there it’s grown in the field, but how does it get to somebody who eats it now, in a direct to retail CSA situation, okay, you’ve, you’ve cut out distribution, you’ve cut out a lot, you’ve cut out a retailer, you know, but most food in the world is in America and Canada is not. That’s not how it works. Most of our people are no longer on the land, they’re in urban settings, the food is grown. And it’s it, we need to connect those groups of eaters and farmers and they need each other. The farmers without the eaters cannot do this. We need conscious eaters who care and who are willing to be political and willing to make choices that aren’t the most convenient choices. And those people need farmers who care and are willing to take the extra effort to do something that’s actually quite different. And it’s not the most immediately profitable way. Yes.

JM Fortier 21:39
And it’s my turn, go. Okay, so just to get to get the storyline straight. So what you’re saying is that, as the organic movement was growing, more people got into it. Farmers became, I would say, more professionals, also, they wanted to make a better living. And then it became, it became possible that there would be a national standard, and that from there, the pie would grow. And it would get more, it would get more serious and get more traction. And then there was probably a fight be inside the movement of who would control this and all that. But ultimately, it got passed. And then there was a unifying standard for any, anything that was going to be claimed as organic. And what you’re saying is that, then what happened is just it wasn’t just farming, it was men, and it was like the food system that got to be involved in the process.

Dave Chapman 22:36
For sure. Cargill is a member of the Organic Trade Association. Okay, which is an astonishing thing. Yeah. So

JM Fortier 22:46
it kind of opened up the game to big players. Yeah,

Dave Chapman 22:53
but here’s the important thing. So this is a place where Eliot and I might not have the same opinion, right? We agree on almost everything. But I don’t think that the critical mistake was having the government be involved. And, and I could say that, look what happened, just what we thought it’s what I thought was going to happen. But if we look at regenerative agriculture, just for example, is one of many examples that we want to look at that we don’t need to go with their right yet, but they’ve had more rapid destruction of meaning. In other words, they’ve, the players have moved in so quickly, and there is no legal definition of regenerative. So it means anything that bear Monsanto wants it to mean and and it doesn’t mean that everything that’s called regenerative is bad. But it does mean that there’s some things that nobody I know would call regenerative that are being called regenerative. So. So the point being, it’s not government, that is the problem that to controls government. And it’s the same people who control not government. And if you get rid of government, you still got bear, Monsanto and Cargill and Syngenta running this show, and yes, they have absurd amount of power in government. And that’s something that I think we need we all of us need to fight against and reverse. But if we got rid of that if we if we said, You know what, screw it. I’m done with organic. I’m going regenerative. Well, good luck with that, because that words already lost. Yeah, for what you mean by it. And what I would mean by it, it’s gone. It’s gone. It’s so you got to keep coming up with a new word, and they’re getting so good at it. It’s basically the moment that you start to get some, some cultural embrace of what you’re doing. They go, Oh, good. We’re with them. You know, and and, you know, Elliott’s Elliott’s solution was to come up with a word that was so ugly and clumsy that nobody would ever copy it not.

Speaker 1 24:55
Because what I’m hearing is marketing like it’s a marketing force. that takes these words in a lot of ways and puts them to their use to make money.

Dave Chapman 25:03
Maybe regenerative was a bad enough word that nobody would copy. It’s kind of long, long, it’s hard to pronounce it, it isn’t now, because we’re so used to it. But at first it was like regenerative. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, you could call it you’d ammonius. And pretty soon everyone be saying I want to use ammonius for carrots. So it, we can’t outrun them. You know, there, there are serious, serious forces at play here. And we won’t outrun them, and we won’t out trick them. And we are going to have to stand and fight.

JM Fortier 25:38
This episode is brought to you by New Society publishing. for over 40 years new society has been at the forefront of publishing books that inspire positive change all over the world. Farming isn’t just about hard work. It’s also about knowledge. And it’s also about stories. And that’s where new society comes in. They published my first book, the market gardener, which has brought 1000s of people to the world of small scale farming. And I can tell you, friends, a new society is more than the publisher. They are a driving force in the movement toward a better and greener future, hop over to New society.com Check out their books, and use the promo code small farm 25 to get 25% off on all of their books. So sweet deal friends, new society publishers cultivating change one page at a time. I love this. Now let’s get back to our program.

Speaker 1 26:34
Do you have thoughts about fighting or just addressing the marketing aspect? It made me think of when you were talking with Michael Pollan, he said something along the lines of the best claims organic can make our environmental but the best marketing is health. And it made me think like, if you’re not in the farming circle, a lot of times organic is just a health term to people like they view organic food as just a sign of better for you health. They’re not even thinking about the environmental aspect of it. They’re only thinking about the health aspect personally. And I think that’s because of the marketing took the word saw the potential and was like, Yep, it’s

Dave Chapman 27:12
it’s where people were organic, grew out of the abuses of the chemical system. And just as big an influence in the success of organic is Albert Howard may be bigger, actually was Rachel Carson, and a Silent Spring Spring. And, you know, she wrote a book that swept across America was read by millions of people. And it was about the perils of chemical solutions to biological problems, and and that the chemical industry was doing wreaking havoc on our world and tracing down how at that point, you know, everybody had DDT in their body. Right? And every every mammal on Earth had DDT in their body and we’re gonna wool. How did that happen? So she brought an awareness of that, that I think really launched the organic movement in America and that and the owl are scare where people are getting sick from the food that they’re eating. I mean, obviously sick. Most of the illness is subtle, and and easy to miss. We just get used to everyone being a little sicker. Right? You don’t go well. It’s because you ate this bad apple that was frayed without

JM Fortier 28:31
like everyone eating gluten. Being wanting wanting to be gluten free today. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 28:35
Because because

JM Fortier 28:36
where’s the problem with the wheat

Dave Chapman 28:39
there? Where’s the problem with the wheat? Yeah, they know. But it wasn’t didn’t used to be that everybody was gluten intolerant. Used to be that’s what people lived on. Yeah. Was wheat. And I think that that, you know, that. So, so? Yes. Health is we should not say that was a mistake. Health is central, both to people’s concerns, but also to the truth of what organic food offers us. It offers us health. Yeah. And if you eat the standard American diet, you will not be healthy. I mean, that’s just true. You will be less healthy and there’s tons and tons of research to prove that. nonetheless. It’s what thrives in our in our supermarkets.

Speaker 1 29:23
It makes me think of that Rodale like JDI the original impetus of organic was health. Yes, of

Dave Chapman 29:31
course, he famously died of a heart attack on Dick Cavett in the middle of a live show, and minutes after he didn’t know that Yeah, minutes after he said, You know, I, I feel great. I’m gonna live forever. And yeah, he had a family of art history. So but my point is, you know, that yes, all of this stuff does make you healthier. It doesn’t make you immortal. And and we know that but it does make you healthier and makes you feel better. So that’s a wrap We all claim and I stand by it. And I believe it. And there’s lots of research to promote it. But we also need to look at the environment, because that’s health also, you know, you can’t be healthy in an unhealthy environment, you can’t be healthy if you can’t drink the water. Yeah. And you can’t be healthy. If if you can’t breathe the air. So these things are are true. I’ll say one more thing, because you referred to that interview with Michael Pollan. Michael said, Well, you know, organic was the thing of the time because it addressed pesticides, and an address environmental pollution. But regenerative is the thing now, because it addresses Climate Change. Now, Michael was speaking here, and as he told me, and apologized after from an uninformed perspective, because it’s not what he’s been paying attention to. He’s been paying attention to drugs, and you know, the mind. Yeah, beautiful. But it’s, it’s, this is part of the marketing campaign of big ag, big food, that regenerative is going to resolve the climate? I don’t think so. And certainly not the regenerative they have in mind. So and Real Organic, is as greatest solution as we have for climate on an agricultural food system basis. And, you know, Michael was just confused about that. I’m sorry, but, but we don’t need to look any further. And it makes sense, because what is good for the environment? And what is good for our health and our animals health is also going to be good for climate. So it’s all one beautiful package.

Unknown Speaker 31:48
Yeah. You were me.

JM Fortier 31:51
I don’t know when a short straw.

Speaker 1 31:55
I was just gonna add that do you feel that carbon gets just like it’s because regenerative it’s, it’s the one talking point is also a carbon? And I feel like it’s they’re just taking that from the air and claiming it. Do you think it gets over? over emphasized? Because there’s so many other things to also talk about.

Dave Chapman 32:13
Of course, that gets over emphasized and everything else is, is critically important, too. We can’t expect to have every conversation about climate. I mean, it’s amazing, actually, how sophisticated many people are becoming in in when you think about it, that we’re sitting here discussing really complex systems. And 40 years ago, nobody had a clue. And now we’re having serious, you know, conversations about the albedo effect. And and, and you know, how much light is being reflected? And, and, you know, what about methane? And what about nitrous oxide, and these are complicated conversations and critical conversations, so people should be getting informed. But you know, this is right. Nonetheless, the idea that it’s just about carbon, and it’s just about farming. I think farming is critically important to Climate Change. But obviously, our uncontrolled use of the miracle of stored carbon, and as we burn it, and it it, fossil fuel, fossil fuel has made an enormous number of things possible, but at a price that might be beyond our ability to pay. And people

JM Fortier 33:31
don’t really see that let’s say they would travel to China or India. They’d be like, okay, whoa, you know, in the industrial, the revolution that happened here, like 100 years ago, now is like 10 folds. In Asia. It’s

Dave Chapman 33:49
hot, humid that they’re having their, their their industrial. Yeah,

JM Fortier 33:53
they’re revolutionising to a point like this. So you were here talking about this and that, but Well,

Dave Chapman 33:59
their consumption is still lower than ours, but their production. So they’re becoming the manufacturing base. So they’re getting all the pollution almost unbearably so. Yeah. What’s amazing about that jam, right? You go to China. Have you read farmers of 40 cent? Yes. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Amazing book. Yeah. And now, which is about the amazing agriculture in in Southeast Asia and China and Korea, Japan, where they were farming intensively the same land with a high population pressure for 4000 regenerative farming, that is true regenerative. It’s also true organic. That’s Real Organic farming. And there’s plenty of bad organic farming in the world, but that was not among it. And I was talking with Ellie about this. And I said, you know, it’s amazing. You remember that book. And they were building really nice outhouses by the road, so that hopefully somebody would come and poop in their outhouse so they got the poop to put on their field. Yeah, right. And if they had a really torrential rain and it washed their topsoil away, they would go down the road in with baskets to bring it back. And it was a level of stewarding organic matter that is just completely out of our, our imagination. And now it agriculture in China has become intensely and horribly chemical and and organic. You can’t even trust it in China. If you want to buy organic. My Chinese friends say we don’t trust it. We try to go and get it from New Zealand if we can, because we at least believe them. We don’t believe the certifiers.

Speaker 1 35:41
Yeah. false promises of the Green Revolution. Right. So I want to

JM Fortier 35:47
circle back to regenerative but before we go there, I just want to because we haven’t talked about what the elephant in the room is that the organic got co opted, which which is the real story behind why the Real Organic? That’s right.

Dave Chapman 36:01
So let me finish my little story. Yeah. So everything was going good, right. And I become a greenhouse farmer. And, and honestly, when I looked around Vermont, I said, I said, this is working. I was wrong. The USDA is doing a good job. I see organic growing in a really healthy way the market is growing. And everywhere I look organic farming looks like organic farming to me. And then about 2012 13 I started to see these really inexpensive certified organic tomatoes appearing in the wholesale market. And they were hydroponic. And they were coming from Mexico, a little bit from Arizona, but mostly Mexico. And I have friends in the hydroponic world. And they said, Yeah, those are hydroponic Dave. I was like, well, hydroponic can’t be certified as organic. We finally finalized that in 2010. It was decided by the National Organic Standards Board. And they were just in the process supposedly, of making rules, while they weren’t in the process of making rules, quite the opposite. So what I came upon was the the tip of one iceberg, but there were three icebergs, but I came upon the hydroponic iceberg. And what was going on, is that there were several large players who were lobbying quietly lobbying the USDA to allow hydroponic to be certified as organic, and it was happening. And when, when Davey Miskell, and I discovered this, we said, well, that’s not right. And we started a petition, we start two petitions, one for eaters and one for farmers. We didn’t know anything about organizing, we didn’t know how to get anyone to sign a petition. But we got 500 organic farmers and 1000 eaters to sign these two petitions. But the farmers included Eliot, Coleman and Fred Kirshen men, you know, people who are like, whoa, and the and the eaters included Michael Pollan, and Dan Barber and Joan Gusmao, these are like hitters. These are people who are answers influencers, major influencers, and they had to be listened to, they didn’t have to be. They didn’t have to act on it, but they had to pretend they were really concerned. And so this began a conversation that became a public debate. As as Bill McKibben once said to me, and he was talking about the fossil fuel industry, he said, I thought we were having a debate. And then one day, I realized we weren’t having a debate, we had won that debate years ago, we were having a fight. And as always, it was a fight with money and power. Well, you could say exactly the same thing about what we were doing. It was a smaller, a smaller fight, because there was less money involved than with fossil fuel. But it was the same thing. Exactly. We weren’t having a debate that was that was all a theater piece for for the papers. And we were having a fight and it was being fought with lobbyists, not not with people speaking at public meetings, but with lobbyists working behind with government. And, and we were losing the fight, and we did lose the fight. So we we had leading up to that we started something called keep the sonar organic, and you were at one of those early rallies. Right. And there were 17 rallies around the country and actually one in in Central America, I think and, and one in Canada, right. And this was all leading to this big vote in the National Organic Standards Board in Jacksonville, Florida. And amazingly, we lost that vote, and the board refused to vote to support a compromise position that most of us didn’t believe in, but we were willing to compromise in an allow container growing if most of the nutrition came from the soil and the content Aner instead of from a liquid feed, and that was defeated, and it was defeated, because a majority of the board were convinced by lobbyists, that hydroponics were okay and should be called organic. So when we lost that, we went back and 60 farmers came from all over the country to that meeting. And I think there were like nine of them from Vermont. And we went back and we had a meeting two weeks later, at the NOFA headquarters, and 30, farmers showed up, just just call around 30 farmers showed up. And we said, well, what are we going to do? And every one of them said, I said, we are we going to just walk away and say, this is now a degraded standard, but it’s what we do to make a living. And everybody said, No, we’re going to start our own standard that stands for Real Organic. And then we said, are we going to make this a standalone? Are we going to make it an add on, and actually, the majority wanted to stand alone. But those of us who are probably going to do the work thought 10 an add on make more sense, because you know, even an add on is a huge amount of work. So that’s what we’ve done. And we said, Let’s build on the good work that we all did with the National Organic Program. But let’s say let’s address these things. So one was hydroponics. Another one huge one is confinement of livestock. So you’ve got probably the majority of organic milk in America is coming from confinement operations. For sure, the vast majority of certified organic eggs in America is coming from confinement factories where chickens never been outside, and it’s life. Right? And pork, same thing. So all of these, all of these ways of of raising animals have veered so far from what Lady Eve was doing with the cattle on her farm back when this began. And from what we all agree, organic should be this is not controversial. Of course, an organic cow should go out to pasture every day, and not just go out to sit down and chew the cud from the grain they were fed, they should be getting their nutrition from that grass. And yes, they’re going to have to be supplemented when they’re in for the winter, or in some places in the country when they’re in for the summer. So we don’t disagree. Nobody thinks her books should be called Organic. There’s no disagreement about this. These aren’t controversial items. What’s controversial is what’s being certified. So that led to the creation of the Real Organic Project. And what year was that? That would have been in 2018? In February of 2018. Yesterday, Yes, yesterday, just yesterday, just yesterday. And you know, we’ve got about 1100 farms we certified now. Yours is one of them. And and most in the US. We’ve got a joint venture, we’re dealing with natural land, to work with farmers and other countries so that we know that if we bring something in, we put our label on it. It’s the real deal. And not your land is very, very highly respected in the rest of the world. They’re based in Germany, but they’ve got 140,000 farms all over the world. Not in the US. We will be the US label.

JM Fortier 43:20
Yeah. Big network.

Dave Chapman 43:22
big network of good people. Yeah, good people trying to do the right thing. So this is all good. It’s just that we are fighting Godzilla. We are I mean, the, the power of the forces we’re up against, just cannot be overestimated. And so we need to go into this with our eyes open. And I’ll say one last thing. Maybe if you want them we can discuss regenerative but one of the people as we start to think bigger that I turned to is a woman named Zephyr Teachout, who wrote a book called break him up. And Zephyrs point is that we all in all walks of life, we are facing the same dilemma, which is the concentration of power in the hands of a few and used to extract resources from the many. And I, you know, we face and organic, we face it on Mega steroids on on conventional. That’s kind of all that’s left. So as we start to address what we’re up against, there are ways to think of this legislatively to have it’s happened in the past where in America we have limited monopoly. And it’s that’s been set aside starting in the Reagan administration. But back in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, they were serious, they broke up Standard Oil, and he broke up 44 monopolies using

JM Fortier 44:56
the Department of Justice. So it was it was done in the past it was

Dave Chapman 45:00
done for FurReal. And it was done pretty successfully, not perfectly, but pretty successfully until the 80s. And then Robert Bork, working for Reagan’s Department of Justice came up with this new definition of the problem with monopoly being if it brings higher prices to consumers. He said, If you can’t prove that this is going to bring higher prices, we’re going to allow these companies to consolidate. Well, it’s a very hard thing to prove that it will lead to a higher price. And so consolidation started, and it continues to this day. And actually, they just challenged the consolidation of two major supermarkets, Kroger’s and Albertsons merging. And, and Biden’s Department of Justice stopped it. So we’ll see if they can keep going with that. But it doesn’t matter if you’re in talking about food or banking or big tech, we all face the same problem, or Uber or it doesn’t matter, that every aspect of our lives are being controlled by fewer and fewer. I can tell you that for myself as a farmer wholesaling into the market. Most of the stores I’ve sold to in the past are now owned by a few Dutch multinationals or not Dutch, by some multinational Whole Foods is owned by Amazon Stop and Shop is owned by I hold USA, which is the Dutch multinational and so it’s fresh, fresh direct in New York, and so is Hannaford. And Shaw’s is owned by Albertsons, or Kroger, I forget that, you know, it becomes almost interchangeable. The point is, even the people you used to deal with are no longer making the decisions in the supermarkets. So in 2016, organic would look like it was going to be the salvation of dairy farming in Vermont, because it was the way for a small farmer to make a living. Yeah, not anymore. Not anymore. Not anymore. It’s like I’m sorry, you better find Plan B, because going organic, the price is not going to be any better for you. And that’s because of the auroras of the world, which dump milk they don’t. They’re not dumping it as the Aurora brand. They’re dumping it to all these supermarket chains is their in store brand. But that depresses the price. Now, you know, organic Valley’s got to compete with them, so they got to drop their price too. So yeah, I

Speaker 1 47:36
was going to add a stat that I’ve heard you say, just to add clarity to this picture that a single facility produced 10% of the US certified organic eggs.

Dave Chapman 47:47
That was Starbucks in Michigan.

Speaker 1 47:50
Yeah. Which I mean, that should be mind blowing. And that that figure comes

Dave Chapman 47:53
from the Washington Post, Peter iski, wrote that one out of 10 certified organic eggs, it at this point, I would say that the percentage of eggs coming from CAFOs is higher than it was then. Yeah, maybe not from that one. But there aren’t that many and they’re just getting bigger and bigger. Yeah. And

Speaker 1 48:13
you also gave an example of Driscoll is and it came from them, like they say that 70% of the certified organic berries in America are Driscoll.

Dave Chapman 48:22
And that was three years ago, it might be 80%. Now, yeah. So and we those

JM Fortier 48:27
are the big farm in California.

Dave Chapman 48:29
Driscoll is the second biggest farm in California. grimmway would be the biggest organic farm. Driscoll is is both the biggest, conventional and organic dairy producer in the world. Driscoll is doesn’t have their own farms by and large, they follow the chicken isation model that Zephyr talks about. So they have contract growers much the way chicken farming is done the way McDonald’s works. And they that way all the labor problems are on the farm. And all the environmental problems are on the farm and Driscoll can go or just innocent babies here. But they they pretty much set the price. And they say what varieties are going to grow? And they consolidate them and and do the marketing. So they’re a distribution company, but they control over 70% of the certified organic berries. And what that means, and this is the punchline to all of this is democracy is in danger. The fact that these CAFOs can sell their stuff is organic when nobody in the organic movement thinks that’s organic. And the law doesn’t think it’s organic, is because they are so powerful. They have so much influence over government that and not just government over the stores right over a distribution. If you run a small store, do you want to be the one that Driscoll says we’re not gonna sell to you. Yeah, good luck. Good luck. And guess what you have a lot of customers who want to buy dress skulls. And if if Driscoll is cut you off, and suddenly, you’re the one who doesn’t have any blueberries in February and March and April, you’re in trouble. So the big stores and the big distributors and the big suppliers all kind of create this cartel, where they only play with each other. And so all those stores I mentioned, I used to sell them, I would deliver directly to them,

JM Fortier 50:33
you’d meet people, you’d meet either the store manager or something like that. You’d have a conversation, the

Dave Chapman 50:38
buyer, whatever we were, we had good, trusted working relationships. And it was a time when all of these stores were trying to buy locally and regionally. Yeah, it was beautiful. Yeah, I thought, wow, this is really working.

JM Fortier 50:50
So something happy got co opted, it

Dave Chapman 50:52
got co opted, it’s gone. The only one of those that I still sell to is Whole Foods. And to be honest. Most of the regional people who are supplying Whole Foods are also gone. We’re still there. But but most of them are gone. Those shells are not available for them to offer their stuff.

JM Fortier 51:11
How about coops like in Burlington? Like for the I don’t want to put these people on the boat or Whole Earth and

Dave Chapman 51:17
yeah, whole whole Earth, City Market and Burlington. Are

JM Fortier 51:21
they still relevant? Are they still kind of independent in that way? Do you think

Dave Chapman 51:25
they’re still relevant and independent.

JM Fortier 51:29
They’re all so scared. Because they can get chewed up,

Dave Chapman 51:33
they can get chewed up, they do get chewed up now. Hunger Mountain is a very special co op in in Montpelier, they will only carry organic stuff for their produce. That’s That’s amazing. And I think they would carry Driscoll they probably do. But they would do anything they could to carry a local berry if they could. So it’s it’s unrealistic to ask somebody to drop Driscoll as a store as an eater. Yes, that’s perfectly reasonable. As a store, you go, Well, they’ve got to make a living in order to keep providing the good stuff, as long as they are providing the good stuff, and giving their customers a true choice. That’s what we want is transparency and integrity. So

JM Fortier 52:18
these stores, would you say that they’re facing danger, because you never know when Whole Foods going to open just beside you, just to cut you off. And then then if you’re out of price, and you don’t have that same amount of volumes, you don’t have that diversity on your shelves, you’re just gonna go.

Dave Chapman 52:33
And it’s not just Whole Foods. Okay. And Burlington. It’s Trader Joe’s Trader Joe’s. Right? Yeah, the only difference between Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, as trade shows wouldn’t think of carrying anything regional, wouldn’t even occur to them. They only want something that’s the same in every every store nationally. And you know, they have no, they have a bad produce department. So. But everyone’s competing with everyone. And one of the things that’s happening with this ratcheting down of the system, and this affects all of us, is what they all have to compete on is not what they offer, because they all offer the same thing. What they have to compete on is price. So how do you get something to be cheaper when it’s already squeezed so tight, that there’s no fat left in that system. And the way you do it is by making a lower quality product. And the people who are involved in producing that product get paid less. So the workers, the people who work in the slaughterhouse on the kill line, they get paid less and less, and the kill line goes faster and faster. So it’s more and more dangerous. They lose more and more fingers or arms. Right or lives. Yeah. And this keeps getting cranked down further and further. In California. They can’t really compete anymore with Mexico because California has now if they’re following the law, they got a $15 an hour minimum wage, 40 hours after that you pay time and a half. So where where’s our food production going? It’s going to Mexico and Central America. At this point. Last I saw only 40% of America’s of the berries and vegetables sold in America are grown in America. Right nevermind feeding the world. We can’t feed the world the world’s feeding us. Yeah. Why is that? Because those other places pay far less a dime on the dollar for labor and very little environmental regulation. So everything that we are horrified by that we want to stop. That’s not the world we want to live in. That’s, that’s why you can get a cheap pint of Driscoll is berries in March. That’s why That’s why they’re

JM Fortier 54:47
cheap. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Ooby. Who B stands for out of our own backyard and it’s an online platform built for small farms and food hubs just like you So they’ll help you increase sales, simplify packing, and optimize deliveries, all so that you can focus on what you do best, which is growing incredible food. Hundreds of independent producers are already using Ooby to sell directly to local customers and build thriving businesses. And here’s a special offer just for the market gardener listeners mentioned the podcasts at signup and Ooby will give you 75% off the onboarding fee. That’s right. 75% off to get you started selling today Ooby four O’s bui.com putting small scale back at the heart of the food system? And would you say Dave, that the big you know, the big drama here? Isn’t the big picture. Because you let’s say we don’t the organic pioneers, they knew that they were facing, you know, big corporate, America, big ag, Big Pharma big data, so they were opposing it. And what they built over all these years, is now taken is the drama that because because, you know, we can talk about for a long time about how the situation the monopolies and consolation and the loss of democracy is is terrible. And it is yes. But for what’s of concern to us is that a lot of growers like me or my generation or younger, they’re getting into this thinking like the pioneers did in the past, we’re building a solution, we’re part of something we’re you know, we’re building the future. Yes. And when I hear that story, and I’m just putting myself in that role is like, let’s say I was building all of that over all these, like, I piggyback on what you guys had done. Like when I came into farming, people were, you know, for organic, and just like I was just producing and selling and it was all good. And I made a career out of that. But let’s say you’re opposing something for all these years, and you’re really deep in the trench, and then at the end, it’s just, again, it’s co opted and it’s taken, yes. And now organic means nothing anymore.

Dave Chapman 57:15
It means something. Okay, so, so here’s the thing, our work is never done, and it will never be done as long as fear and greed exists. And and we’re always going to have to keep struggling with this inside ourselves. Right? I have fear and greed to I’m gonna have to struggle with it me. And even more, we have to struggle with it in the system that we willingly or unwillingly participate in. And I agree we need to find solutions that are accessible to us individually. The reason I started to talk about Zephyr Teachout is she has a beautiful description of the difference between Thoreau and Martin Luther King was going to ask you about this. Yeah, it’s really it’s really important. And you know, Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, they both had a three name name. And they both practice civil disobedience. And and Thoreau was one of the people that King studied to see, well, what was he thinking about this. And it was important what he was saying, but there was a very basic difference. Thoreau’s actions were about his personal wholeness, about saying, You know what, to be the person I want to be, I can’t pay this tax. And so I’m not going to pay this tax. And that would be like me, the young farmers saying, and it is what I said, you know, what, I don’t want to be part of that system. I’m going to make my own, make my own system, I’m going to grow vegetables, I’m going to develop a farmers market. If I’d been 20 years younger, I would have said, I’m going to start a CSA, I’m going to try and get some shelf on the local Co Op, some space. And we’re going to create an alternative to all that. Okay, that is a beautiful thing. And that is, by the way, pure Elliott, you know, screw them, I’m going to do it myself, King at a different idea that was so powerful, also. And he said yes, but I’m going to be strategic about what I do, because we need to build a movement that will ultimately change the system. It will change the laws, it will change the rules, it will change what the whole thing looks like. And I think that this is probably more obvious to a person of color than to a white person because to the person of color. They’re going, You know what, I can do all that I can make a good life, but I know for my kids, they can still get pulled over for the wrong reason, and stopped and maybe we’ll was their life in that exchange. And so they’re looking to change something much bigger. And I think we all need to look at that. So it’s not that anything that Thoreau did was wrong. But let’s bring some of Martin Luther King’s perspective to our activities, and go, How do I build a movement here? And ultimately, how do we find the ways to make strategic alliances to change the system. And, and that was always part of organic too, but was more of an emphasis on Thoreau’s vision. And, and then actually, what happened to organic is it kind of lost sight of the fact that it was a movement. So that’s what Real Organic Project is trying to call us home, call me home, we all did it, we all went, I’m trying to make a living and raise my kids, right. But now, it’s like, that’s not enough. That is really important. But we also remember that we’re a movement, and, and the world needs us the world needs our movement. So we need we need to have a movement.

Speaker 1 1:01:07
And things do follow movements more than maybe people want to see, like, if you just think that 100 years ago, we wouldn’t even have this conversation because there wasn’t even conventional yet it was the only farming was organic, but then you had conventional come in completely changes the world to the point that we call it conventional and organic is now an alternative. And now we go from that through its process. And we’re here now like, in a fight against it being corrupt, I’ve just, what I’m seeing is that so many things have changed in such a short time. And so many people are reacting to it all in very short time. Like the fact that organic is as big as it is based on how small it was. It’s also like things follow the amazing. That’s really I think, though, as pessimistic as we could be, there’s also so much hope and away when you just see how much has changed? That’s right, like already in just the last 10 years. I mean, that’s

Dave Chapman 1:02:06
right. And we can’t we can’t abdicate our position. I want to say one thing that I don’t agree with that you just said. And that is that will everything was organic back then. I don’t think so there’s lots of bad farming. And organic is not just this, not using chemicals. Organic is doing a lot of positive things to build up maintain, improve the health, the life in the soil, which is we’ve learned this and it’s been around for millennia, right. But there’s been bad farming around for millennia to good point. And and so, you know, I had this disagreement with Allan Savory. I was like, you know, he says, Well, you know, organic farming lead to destruction of 10 civilizations. I mean, that’s not organic farming. It’s bad farming without chemicals. But there’s plenty, you know, and it’s not easy to figure out. When you have high population pressure. How do we do this and maintain the soil?

JM Fortier 1:03:01
It sounds to me that that’s where the word regenerative comes into play. Because if it’s a true regenerative farming system, it’s going to be able to just go for millenium. That’s

Dave Chapman 1:03:13
right. You just have to say real regenerative.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:16
Yeah, right? You

Dave Chapman 1:03:16
can’t say regenerative that word said Can

JM Fortier 1:03:18
we can we fast forward to that. Chris, are you okay with that? Because that’s also an area that I’m concerned like, obviously, you know, the organic movement, reclaiming it, repositioning it as being relevant and is important. And, but what I’m seeing now is the the regenerative bandwagon. And I’ve been pretty kind of blunt about it. I’m very skeptical about who uses that word who controls it? I see a lot of young people super into it. And I’m like, Are you guys like, aware that perhaps you’re being manipulated here? I see these movies coming out of California, for all Hollywood. Like they’re these are major, major influence powers. And yeah, I just want to know what you think about that. Because on my end, I’m like, when I see everyone jumping on that bandwagon, I’m like, I think you guys are being manipulated here or something like that.

Dave Chapman 1:04:17
You know, a jam, there’s there’s resonance there about what has happened to organic, but it is different. But that resonance is that people want it to do the right thing. They want to be part of something positive. And younger people especially want to feel like they invented it. It’s like, yeah, my parents, you know, but I’m going to do something and that’s good. That’s good, right? But what is it and, and astonishing success of the term regenerative is partially due to the fact that there’s an astonishing amount of dark money going into promoting it Do the chemical companies love this term? Right? Because it’s ill defined. And I have friends who are regenerative champions and they say, No, it’s not I tell you exactly what it means bump, bump, bump, bump bump. I was just at a conference in. In California, it was the Eco farm conference. And we’re at a one day pre conference and, and a guy got up. And he talked about the five points, I think that were critical to his his definition of what he wanted to do as a regenerative farmer. And he sat down and only said you, you left out not using herbicides, and other chemical inputs. He

JM Fortier 1:05:42
was invited to speak at that conference.

Dave Chapman 1:05:43
He was an organizer. He’s a good guy. He’s a famous organic pioneer. And, and he said, Well, yeah, that’s a given. And she said, it’s not a given if you don’t say it, because it is not a given. And okay, so this is why it’s important to talk about this. And we have to, we have to slow this down for a minute and accept that this needs to be a nuanced conversation. You can’t say regenerative is good. And you can’t say it’s bad, because who’s regenerative? Are we talking about? And there certainly is not a consensus about what that term means. And we all have friends who are spectacular, and they call themselves regenerative, and they believe in it. And if I say something negative, some of them are very angry with me. How can you say something against what I’m doing? I’m not saying anything against what you’re doing. I’m saying that this term is being used to apply now they just last year, the year before they got almost $3 billion from the USDA for what is called Climate Smart Agriculture. And regenerative is another term for climate smart. Climate Smart as a term I think, was basically coined by Monsanto as a way of aligning themselves is that work good. And what they mean by that is that they don’t tell they don’t tell the earth. And if you ask somebody who will tell the truth, what they mean by that, is that they use herbicides. Yeah, right. You go, Wait a minute.

JM Fortier 1:07:12
That’s how that that’s how they do the bed prep. I thought as soil they prepare soil by using herbicides to destroy what was there, so that it can plant into it, instead of plowing.

Dave Chapman 1:07:22
And they find somebody out there who’s doing it without herbicides and make a big deal out of them. God bless them, right? God bless Brian O’Hara, who does a beautiful job with as even Brian would say, Well, I’m not no-till I just don’t tell very often, but he does a beautiful job with very little tillage and and everybody should study that and understand it and see if that’s a good thing to add. But that is not what most people mean,

JM Fortier 1:07:50
exactly. That’s the real problem. The problem is not that we’re not telling. The problem is that the word is used and promoted by interests that are into selling something else. One

Dave Chapman 1:08:02
of the great great champions of regenerative agriculture is Syngenta. As people don’t know what Syngenta is, it’s a big chemical company. And they sell a lot of agricultural chemicals. And in my opinion, they do not have a good leadership and they trash talk organic, they hate organic, and talk about the whole world will starve if we go organic. And they, if you go to their website, there’s this beautiful, beautiful page about regenerative agriculture, it goes on for miles. And it says everything that we would all agree with. That’s wonderful all about the health of the living soil and all this stuff. And then at the very bottom, after you’ve been reading for half an hour, there’s this little paragraph that says, of course, we support the responsible use of agricultural chemicals. And we will minimize that as much as possible. There’s a company makes their whole living off selling agricultural chemicals. And why why can they sell this good stuff about soil health, and then trash organic, because they believe that agriculture should be based on the use of chemical inputs. And by that they mean yes, fertilizers, but they also mean insecticides, and fungicides, and most especially now herbicides. So we do not have a lot of examples, and certainly nothing on a scale of people who are not tilling and we have lots of examples of people who are tilling responsibly and have built up the life in their soil and have this beautiful living soil that is producing this amazing food. So we need to slow it down a little and say well wait a minute, where do you get these ideas from? And and you know, I’ve seen people go, when you when you till the soil, it’s like tearing open your mother’s breasts. I’m like, where do you get that idea? You know, and that those soil isn’t able to incorporate recover this and Allan Savory talks about, you know, the hoods of the animals. Yeah, that’s his tillage system. Yeah. It’s the soil gets tilled. So complicated issues, but the reason that it’s so complicated emotionally is the people who I think are cynical and want to mislead people are coming in and embracing people who have only the best of motives and and are telling the truth and saying we’re with them.

JM Fortier 1:10:35
Like the black sheep. So

Dave Chapman 1:10:37
I say to the people who are if they’re saying they’re with you, you need to say a few agree that they’re with you. And and our friends who I would call the real regenerative people need to make clear, we are not with General Mills, we are not with bear Monsanto, we’re not with Pepsi, we’re not with McDonald’s. We are not with ADM, we are not with Bungie. These all companies all claim to be regenerative. This is the people who run the world.

Speaker 1 1:11:07
It almost it makes me laugh just hearing those companies claiming to be regenerative

JM Fortier 1:11:11
MacDonald. Like it’s just, they’re very serious if you don’t use plastic straw anymore. There you

Speaker 1 1:11:17
go. No, no, I just it is it’s funny, like how ridiculous that sounds.

Dave Chapman 1:11:22
I love to talk about a company like Pepsi. As Paul said, if their entire fleet which is the biggest distribution fleet on the planet bigger than than ups, if their entire fleet was electric, they still wouldn’t be regenerative, because they’re using all that to deliver poison. Right? They’re using that to deliver this, these these toxic substances that are substituting as food. So these are complicated conversations. But I think it’s important, the speed, the rapidity with which regenerative became this thing. And and of course, there are lots of people who just wanted an alternative to what they saw as a degraded organic standard. And, and I have to take responsibility, because I’ve been one of the biggest mouths, saying that there are problems with organic, and there are but I did not come to destroy organic, I come to save it right then that it’s worth saving. And it’s important. And all those companies they don’t like organic, because they can’t make the ridiculous claims that they make around regenerative because their legal definition. We have to fight about whether that law is being enforced because it isn’t. But you still can’t use glyphosate, you know, so

Unknown Speaker 1:12:45
can we get hopeful now?

Dave Chapman 1:12:46
Absolutely.

JM Fortier 1:12:47
I am hopeful and joyful. I just, I just, I’m just happy to hear this message. Because I just it’s brings clarity, that’s it, it just brings clarity. And then once you have clarity, then you can you can really be effective. So for me like having this conversation. And this long format allows us to go and bit more detail and experience the nuance and which I’m really appreciative of. But that’s where I get my joy about like this conversation. For me, I like it because it brings clarity. And then with clarity, we can come up with a real action plan.

Dave Chapman 1:13:22
There’s a really hopeful thing, which it’s hopeful that so many people choose to go and buy organic, because they want the right thing. Yeah, they and they’re willing to pay more for it. And sometimes they don’t have more. So they’re willing to make sacrifices in other parts of their life, to eat the right food and to support what they would call the right kind of farming. That’s a good thing. We must celebrate that. Michael Pollan had an idea I had the idea to but I’ll give it to him because he’s more famous. What if we had a video camera, you know, a screen at at every dairy counter, every dairy case, in every supermarket in Canada, and America. And you got to see where each milk came from. Just honest reporting, just a video loop showing where that milk is coming from. Overnight, we when nobody’s going to buy the Herb Brooks eggs, whichever brand they’re being sold under. They’re all going to buy the eggs from somebody who’s doing it right. They all will, right? Everybody’s going to buy the milk from someplace like butter works instead of someplace like Aurora. So all of a sudden, all of these dairies and small egg producers who are being put out of business, literally, all of a sudden, they’re in business again. And those CAFO producers who are raking in the bucks, all of a sudden, they’re economically challenged. And all we had to do was tell the truth and get it so people could hear it, that we don’t have to convince the people. We don’t have to say let me tell you about animal welfare. It’s terrible for our academy treat this, all we have to do is show them say this is the truth. And this is the truth. Which one do you want to buy? I’m going to tell you what the nice one costs more, it’s going to cost more because that is more expensive because the animal isn’t terribly abused, and the worker isn’t terribly abused. But everything works better. And you’re gonna feel better, both emotionally and literally, physically if you eat the good eggs instead of the not so good eggs. So I think that we can be really optimistic about the fact that people want the right food. Sometimes they can’t afford it. Yeah, that’s not their fault. And it’s not organic, organic farmers fault. There is somebody who is at fault. Yeah, the monopolist, they’re taking all the money out of the communities. Yeah, our pay has gone way down in the last 30 years for a regular working person. But we’re not talking about that right now. But that’s a reality. But what Israel that we are talking about is people do want good food. And they do want food grown in a decent way. All we have to do is find a way to get through the communication gap. And unfortunately, we’re up against world pros in misleading people.

JM Fortier 1:16:17
Yeah, I think the smartphones though, they leverage the playing field a little bit. Because now we we can have access we used to with Facebook now it’s kind of that also is being eroded Instagram and all that. But, you know, five years ago, there was a there was these platforms. I know, we’re there for us to kind of operate on. But does that make you feel better, Chris, that that whole thing of just, if we just tell the story as it is, then we win kind of overnight?

Speaker 1 1:16:48
It’s interesting, because it it made me think we had a we spoke with Pete Russell of movie Have you ever heard of Ooby is a it’s a online platform for helping small scale farmers to distribute their produce, but through an online store presence. He was explaining the history of supermarkets. And he had three kind of big pillars and what happened but the third one had to do with awareness. And he said that the thing that supermarkets did was put a gargantuan building in the middle of town that you couldn’t possibly ignore. And that just that alone made everyone go there. Because you can’t ignore it. It solves the awareness piece. And it brings me to right now, which is the awareness piece in a digital world with digital messaging is a lot more complicated because you there’s not really something so obvious, you can’t just put a piece of real estate in front of the face as easily. The I don’t know, it’s just an interesting parallel, I’m seeing in my mind of like, You’re right awareness could potentially make people buy organic overnight, if everybody could get the exact same like message. Right? Well, we

Dave Chapman 1:17:51
have to appreciate the fact that they’re also being misled on a massive scale by people who have a lot more resources than we do. So better marketing, better marketing, they have the best and the brightest, and they have technology if there was UI, and and the leverage of them doing that, you know that they can come up with an amazing campaign instead of having, you know, 200,000 here, it will be 200 million, you know that that? So our our outreach is a challenge. The internet’s not going to save us. There’s a wonderful I’ve interviewed Seth Godin a couple of times is fairly interesting guy. And he once said, you know, I thought that the internet was going to be the the great force for democratization of our of our lives and of our business world. And I was wrong. It’s become the cesspit. And we just have to accept that once again, it’s not going to be easy. Yes, some things because we have smartphones. But they’re it’s a system and there are people who know how to work it better than we do. So we just have to keep trying and figure out. I have, I have hope I don’t have optimism, but I have hope. And. And, you know, for me, the most hopeful thing is that I get we get to know each other. And I’ve gotten to know so many, like wonderful people. So I get to come and have these conversations with people who are all working hard to make this work better for all of us. So that to me, the people power is the most hopeful thing. And it’s just it’s going to be hard. It’s gonna be hard. That’s okay. You know, what else do we have today?

JM Fortier 1:19:42
It was hard. It was it was hard for the pioneers. 40 years ago,

Dave Chapman 1:19:46
it very hard, very hard. They took abuse, like we can’t even imagine. You know, yeah, that’s

JM Fortier 1:19:51
right. So it’s a different kind of heart. That’s right. They were outcasts, as I remember Eliot telling stories of people ridicule Lou, you know, making making you sound like you were stupid all the time. And it was all geared towards this. discredit discrediting you. Yeah, yeah. And it came from, you know, university people that would come and challenge what you were saying even though if you right there was always about making you feel like you weren’t. You know. So that’s not that for self esteem Well, when you’re trying to do the right and it’s it’s hard just to make it work physically then, you know, socially you’re an outcast and Stuart

Dave Chapman 1:20:32
Hill said that, in the early days of organic, the the pioneers took so much abuse, they had to be hard asses. They had to be tough. And he said made some of them hard people so was not easy for their families, either. They’re just kind of, you know, boneheaded stiff neck, people who’d say, Well, I don’t care what they say about me, I’m still going to proceed. And that it’s so much easier for people now they almost it’s like the third generation, the first generation of women who went into academia, it was tough. And now, women going in academia, don’t even think about it, which is wonderful. That’s what that’s what success looks like. I think now, there’s a lot of good people about organic in academia. That’s, that’s wonderful. We’re, we’re making progress there. We just have these forces that we are up against. And they are powerful. They control our lives in ways we don’t even see. And I don’t have any easy answer. I was talking to somebody in the drive here. And she said, Yeah, you know, Zephyr comes up with the solution and says, I think we can do it and only 60 years, and people go, Oh, I’m going to be dead in six years. What kind of solution is that? But But David Bronner says, when I got really depressed one day says, Dave, this is generational. And if you think it’s something that we’re going to win in a year or two, we won’t. Yeah. And it’s okay. It is what it is. It’s our work. Yeah,

JM Fortier 1:22:09
there might be a bright spot. We don’t know they’ve put in Chris. But you know, young people, they’re very creative. And let’s say they’re made aware of problems. You never know what kind of solutions they’ll come up with. They know, all the new things that happens young people inventing things and like internet was invented by young people, Apple Computer, you know, all the things that you see, there’s all young people kind of think about these things and coming up with new solutions. So for me, like sharing the ethos of organic, and then, you know, perhaps just going over the fact that, you know, let’s say it’s a farmer led movement, but it’s good to have bright new minds thinking about these problems and perhaps,

Dave Chapman 1:22:49
and new problems, Jay? Yeah. So climate is coming, like a freight train. Yeah. It’s coming around the corner. Yes, we feel it now. But it’s nothing compared to what it’s going to be. The world thinks they have problems with immigration now. Just wait 15 years. Yeah, people are going to be forced to try and come into these Haven, places like the US and Canada, because they won’t be able to live in their countries. It’d be too hot to dry. Same with Europe. And that’s going to change everything. It’s going to change the politics it’s going to make it screamer and more desperate. But it’s also going to make it that everybody is an activist.

JM Fortier 1:23:32
Yeah, it’s gonna it’s going to make all the farming hydroponic. No, yeah. Because it’s all going to be need to be grown inside because it’s too warm outside. I

Dave Chapman 1:23:41
think not, I think not. But it’s going to make a lot more hydroponic. But not all, there’s going to be a lot of people seeking for genuine solutions, not just something that kicks it down the road, for sure. If you live in the desert, and you’re trying to grow food, hydroponic, makes sense. I had a group of students that came to me from Dartmouth, and they’re trying to design a system to grow food on Mars. And like, they said, Look, we know how you feel about it. But we’re first space station. That’s our, that’s our project. And the soil on Mars is literally toxic and poisonous. So the only thing we can come up with is hydroponics. And what do you think? I said, Well, you got to do what you got to do. And they said, Yeah, but what about the health consequences? I said for how many years? They said, Well, I don’t know. A couple years. I said a couple of years probably okay 20 years, I wouldn’t count on having kids. You know, who knows we don’t know where the lab rats here. Nobody’s ever eaten like that.

JM Fortier 1:24:43
Do you want to read them our question? Not yet.

Speaker 1 1:24:46
I wanted to ask you about Europe. Your speaking of solutions are not solutions per se, but at least positivity or maybe solutions. Well tell us about your both.

Dave Chapman 1:24:55
Okay, so, so interesting. The EU has created the Farm to Fork initiative, which is the most forward thinking radical proposition. And, and this has passed the European Parliament. It’s just it’s it’s a recommendation, it’s where we’re headed. It’s not like a set of rules, we must, but their goal is by the year 2030, to have reduced the chemical inputs to agriculture by 50%. Right, that is so radical, and to increase the percentage of certified organic land up to 25% of the farmland, hugely radical propositions and things that I completely endorse. And I go God, they got international government to pass this. Okay, maybe they weren’t going to reach it. Maybe they were. But what’s going on right now is very interesting. So you’ve probably seen massive pharma protests in the EU. And farmers are pretty activist in the EU. And you know, as Davey Miskell said, he remembers when the when the French farmers were waiting at the border for the Spanish trucks to come with the produce, and they just burn them.

Speaker 2 1:26:17
Or not. Or the McDonald’s or the McDonald’s. right darling with a tractor. That’s right.

Dave Chapman 1:26:21
She was able to and we’ve seen him spraying shit on Yeah, on, you know, like their version of the White House. You know, we’re

JM Fortier 1:26:27
putting sheeps out in the central parts. Yeah. And the cops, they just can’t get the sheep’s, they just don’t they can’t catch

Dave Chapman 1:26:33
them. They can’t catch them. Right. So it’s a it’s a, it’s a real thing. But I had to wonder because these protests are totally legitimate farmers are being underpaid. They’re being expected to do things that they can’t do. But they’re also pretty highly coordinated. And one of the things that they’re saying is we we protest the reduction of chemical inputs. Right, we don’t want this. And I when it

JM Fortier 1:27:04
makes our farm non viable.

Dave Chapman 1:27:05
I wonder, I just wonder who’s helping organize this? You know, and maybe that’s a conspiracy theory, we’ll never know. But it struck me that the forces that we’re up against, are powerful beyond reckoning, and they don’t play by the same rules that we do. So I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen. But I say overall, in terms of organic, the EU is better than the US they have greater integrity and greater transparency. So they absolutely have forbidden hydroponic production, to be certified as organic, they have been much stronger about not allowing confinement livestock, and they also have been much more aggressive at finding and, and getting rid of grain fraud from imports. So the big three, the big three, that are plaguing organic, they are doing a much better job. And here’s the punch line. And, and you know, what they say in America, is everybody deserves organic, meaning we need to make it cheaper, so that people who aren’t getting paid enough to make a living, instead of paying them enough to make a living. Yeah, let’s just keep giving them cheaper and cheaper food. Right. And so how do we make cheaper food? Well, we pay farm help less, we treat animals abusively, right. And we changed the rules. So now hydroponic, which is less expensive not to get set up. But once you’re up and producing, you can do it cheaper because the food is worthless, it’s not as good. So in Europe, they have not done that. They have not said we’re going to allow hydroponic and they’ve not said we’re going to allow confinement, so it is not made their food unnaturally unrealistically cheap. And the effect is organic has grown faster in the EU than in the US. Its rate of growth has been faster and they now they’re certified organic sales are higher than in the US. So just you know the to show we can do this right if people trust it, and believe in it, we can grow

JM Fortier 1:29:20
it I see a definite link Dave and Chris with because I go to Europe a lot I go to France all the time. And for me like the the building point for all of this as it’s eating as a cultural act, like to have these cheeses these natural wines, this just like this, this celebration of fine food. And when I say fine, I just mean like real food. It’s so ingrained in who they are, how they how they live their lives, that it becomes a major force dislike and I see that less than the US Yeah, they If people are not well, well educated about fine food. And again, when I say fine, I mean like just real food, real food. So you know that that bridges back to, you know, farm to table, it bridges back to the culinary aspect of all of this just like the education of what is real food. But when food becomes cultural, it it’s harder to kind of manipulate. Yes. Because go to go to a French, any French family and tell them you know, we’ll bring wine from California or Argentina and from this, you know, this big big? And there’ll be I’ve not you know this not drinking that wine? For sure. Yeah. You know, because for them, it just wouldn’t make any sense. You

Dave Chapman 1:30:48
know, my my wife, Claudia went to northern Italy. And she came back and she said the food was so incredibly delicious. And I’m just talking about going anywhere. Not not white table. tablecloth, everyone just spaghetti? Yeah, right. said I’ve never had spaghetti like that. The wine. She says just table wine. Now just fresh, green table. Delicious. The person who really dives into that is Mark Schatzker. And in his, in his great books, Dorito effect, and actually, especially in the end of craving, talks about why is it so delicious? And what is the culture that demands that? And our culture doesn’t demand it and doesn’t expect it? You know, there’s something going on, I have to remember. Yeah, I’m a little bit old, but I’m not that old. McDonald’s and, and Walmart had not begun when I was born, in my lifetime, in my lifetime. And Walmart now sells a third of all the groceries in America. And it’s bigger than the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth supermarket chains put together just this one chain. Right? Unbelievable. Unbelievable when you consider the power of that one chain. And and, you know, McDonald’s as a restaurant has redefined the world. But they it happened in our lifetime. So the changes have been so great. And we need to consider what are the changes we need in our child’s lifetime? Yeah, and some baby born now. Because it’s a blank slate. Yes, there’s a lot of momentum. But there was a lot of momentum before and something totally new got created. And it wasn’t all good. A lot of it was very not good. And a lot of things that were precious were lost. So let’s think about how do we get the precious things back? How do we build the culture? I know it’s it’s like we look at these problems and go, Well, how am I supposed to know

JM Fortier 1:33:00
but these are positive signs. Like I just came back from North Carolina. And it’s like, I’m in a bar. And it’s you know, an Asheville is the beer capital of the US, they say and, you know, I relate to bars a lot. You can eat when you’re sitting in a bar, and especially if there’s a big bar, you can see you can see what’s going on. And you had the farmers there, they had leather boots, they had hats, they had style, and they were probably we were probably all talking about interesting stuff. And then you would see the other people in that in that bar. And it was like I was I was like, I don’t think I would want to ask what these guys are talking about. Probably not interested. And for me, like as a group we stand out as people that are interesting, because we like food. We like community. We like farming. We like music that’s kind of different from popular, the popular mass. And I just feel that into that super positive. Like we’re still kind of like the hippie or the rebel. It’s the same thing kind of happening all over again. Yes, but But style and culture and agriculture and just like being being part of something as a movement again, like I see it. Yeah, it’s there.

Dave Chapman 1:34:14
It’s there. And it’s not. It’s bottom LED. It’s it’s from the grass roots. And we just need to take good care of the ground so that the grass roots will spread and grow a lot of people read your book, JM, that’s a really good sign. And each one of those people talks to 100 people, and they spread these ideas. So there’s a battle for hearts and minds going on. We can say it’s not a battle, that’s fine. But but there is a question about about what’s going to be the culture of the future. And we all have a say in that And you know, Kristin Kimball, you might know, Chris, you know, Mark and Chris 30 life. Yeah, the dirty lives. Yeah. She’s wonderful.

JM Fortier 1:35:08
I met her boyfriend. Um, I don’t know if she’s still Yeah, he was a, he was a heavy duty farmer like,

Dave Chapman 1:35:13
he’s heavy duty hardcore. Yeah, he’s a wild man. And I met Mark, he was gnawing on a piece of raw lamb bone, because he had gone to speak at a conference and they brought some frozen food to demonstrate, and they serve crummy American food that wasn’t organic. And you know, and he said, I’m not going to eat that. So he’s eating some raw meat. And I’m like, Well, okay, you know, I’m impressed. You know, you’re serious. But, you know, she’s what, they’re both wonderful. And she got up and spoke at church time last year. And she said, that’s a Real Organic conference. And she said, you know, there are no activist farmers without activists eaters. Right? We do this together. Yeah, it eater who cares? Not just Yes, I, I buy organic, when it’s convenient. I buy organic, anytime I possibly can. And I go out of my way to find it. And not just five things in the basket, but everything in the shelf, and get rid of that stuff that isn’t and see if you can make a difference and spread this. And then the world starts to look different. It becomes not, oh, you’re a foodie, you’re I hate that term, foodie, you know, like, some kind of wacko, it’s like, no, I’m somebody who cares about what I eat. Yeah, and I don’t eat fancy food, but I do eat good food. I eat good food. And I feel good because of it. And, you know, like Rodale, maybe I’ll drop dead in 10 minutes. So I hope that interview ends before that, but But you know, it’s like, I do think it makes a difference. But it also is, I enjoy it. It’s not something I do in order to live long. I do it because it’s what makes me feel good today.

Speaker 1 1:37:01
You know, and just like, you know, just like we, we don’t, we’re not worried about whether or not small farms can feed the world, we’re worried about whether we can feed our community. And if everybody just thought like that, then we’d feed the world. And I think the same goes for building a movement. And like, we feel it here, where we live, like, we have a really strong community of a lot of people that are activist eco citizens, all about supporting their local farmers. I mean, it’s not perfect or anything, but it’s like, it’s we have that in our face, and we see it and it, you can just tell that anytime a small farm opens up shop in any place, it’s the start of a potential new community and a ripple effect. Yeah, but I think is happening constantly. And anyone that’s around that, and close enough that once you see it, you can’t go back. Like you’re no longer in the shadow you want, like, if you move somewhere, you need to find your small farm community, you can’t just yeah, you need to, you have to, that’s what I was in New Jersey, and I moved to Quebec and originally was in Montreal for a year just because that’s where my wife lived. But I knew instantly, like, I need to find the farmers. Yeah, that’s my people.

Dave Chapman 1:38:14
Your work is so important. What you guys are doing is so important. And and it’s, we need the farmers. And I just I just say over and over that we need to find the threads that connect us. And not just the farmers, the eater, so it is a community. And then we need to figure out what do we do together? And, you know, I think it’s important question to keep asking and say it does matter. When they gave me some award at NOFA. One year was very nice. And I was like, Oh, I didn’t know anything about it. So I get up and 800 people and I don’t know what to say. And I’d say I didn’t say much. But I said one thing I said, you know, I’ve been doing this a long time. And all I did was pay attention to my farming. Once I really got deep into it. I was running a business and I I kind of left the movement behind. And I was wrong. I was wrong. I don’t judge myself, I was everything good that I was doing. But I needed to set aside a little bit of attention to maintain those, that community web, because it’s important. That’s all it’s just important. And it’s part of what we do. And it’s not important in a transactional way of like, I’ll be able to make a better living if I do this. It’s just something that we need to do. And it’s like going to church just like going to church and you know, an earlier generation it was taken for granted that you would serve on the local boards and and do these things to be a good citizen. And I know many people do that. Do that. But it’s just at this point. We also face problems that are not local And so it’s important to be connected to people who are not local as well. And there are certain things that cannot be fixed locally, they need to be fixed regionally or nationally or internationally. So just we put a little bit of our attention on making sure that we are connected, so that we can have some voice. And as I say, I’m not optimistic, but I am hopeful that

JM Fortier 1:40:28
you’re doing amazing work, Dave, really, you are. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 1:40:34
I just wanted to say too, that this podcast, as well as yours are kind of examples of that, that, like, we’re not just here to talk about farming techniques, we’re trying to spread a message, or a variety of messages that spread like a ripple to get more people into local enter, not even just farming, but even deeper, like bringing people back home, out of this globalized world into a world where they care about their neighbors and their family more than they do about something they see on their phone. Yes. And so thank you for your podcast, by the way, like, and I’ve watched here and there over the years and preparing for this, I watched a few more. And it’s great. It’s great. And it’s not again, you’re not just you’re interviewing a pretty wide variety of people that are coming out this issue of you know, organic being co opted and whatnot, from many different angles, and many different points of view and different backgrounds. Yeah. And that’s what we want to do to is talk to people from a variety of places as well. It’s,

Dave Chapman 1:41:35
it’s a privilege to get all these different, different points of view. And one of my interviews that I really enjoyed was a guy who started a school of psychotherapy. And I said, Dick, I think that there’s connection here. Let’s see if we can find it. And it was fun. It was fun. But yeah, that’s right. Lots of points of view.

JM Fortier 1:41:59
Yeah, yeah. Want to do rapid fire, and then we can wrap salutely go for lunch.

Speaker 1 1:42:04
Is there anything that we’ve you feel like we haven’t touched on that you want to talk about?

Dave Chapman 1:42:10
Well, I should tell people to go to Real Organic project.org. And and you know, it’s a it’s a whole world there. Yeah, we got over 150 interviews, and really, very few of them are boring. They’re almost all interesting. So I really recommend that we have these symposia, that are just tremendous. You’ve been in some and your your interview is about to come out. I think in the next two weeks, maybe we’re going to release the last one. I think that’s it. Yeah. Yeah, well, we’ll make sure you know about it. So. And if you’re a certified organic, join us get get certified. With a Real Organic Project, it’s free. It’s amazing. Almost everything we do is free. We charge a small amount for various symposia and stuff, but to be certified as free, and it’s not, it’s not painful, it’s, you have to go through the 20 minutes of filling out something online. But anyway, that’s how we build a movement is we invest a little bit of time and energy, and so that we kind of come together and we’re figuring out all the time trying to figure out how do we turn that into a meeting of the Grange? It used to be we would just meet at the Grange, right? We were the farmers would come together, that maybe it was the church group would come together. And now it’s more complicated. So how do we build community? It’s a real question.

JM Fortier 1:43:38
Yeah, it is. It is. So you know, everyone listening, they can check out the website, Real Organic, real organic.org. And the symposium I see it is there 2024. There’s also a donate button desk, which I think is an important button. Yeah,

Dave Chapman 1:43:55
we we need support, and people give what they can. We’ve gotten anywhere from $3 to $300,000. And I will just say that, for the record, I’m a volunteer. So you know, I got no boat payments to here. Yeah, this is this is. So we can have a team that goes in they work like dogs. And we don’t charge the farmers definitely farmers donate money. But we don’t charge so if somebody can’t, that’s fine. It’s free.

JM Fortier 1:44:28
So yeah, that’s incredible. Yeah,

Dave Chapman 1:44:32
we decided from the beginning, this would be community supported agriculture. Yeah. Love it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:44:38
Love it. Great. Dave. What book have you read more than once?

Dave Chapman 1:44:45
I actually I read. Most recently, I read Zephyr Teachout to break them up more than once and excellent book about consolidation of power and monopoly and what does it mean and how do you deal with it? So that’s the most recent one that I I’ve read more than once I just finished a fantastic book that isn’t out yet. But it’s coming out in two weeks called barons, and it’s by Austin ferric. And it’s also about consolidation in the food industry. And it goes through dress skulls, and it goes through Cargill, and it goes through a big dairy thing and a big meat. And it’s everything that we’re fighting against. It really lays it out pretty well.

Speaker 1 1:45:25
Is there an older book as well that you’ve read many times throughout your life? About about anything, that’s a sign that you revisit? It could be

Dave Chapman 1:45:35
Tai Chi? Well, you know, sure. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings. Wizard of mercy is perhaps a book I’ve read three or four times beautiful book by Ursula Gwyn about fear. Speaking about fear. Yeah, it’s beautiful, short fable. I would recommend that to anybody.

Speaker 1 1:45:56
And it can help you to not be afraid of speaking up. Yes, perhaps? Yes.

Dave Chapman 1:46:00
It’s it’s really about fear. And it’s, it’s done. I mean, you know, there’s a few dragons floating around and all but it’s, it’s it’s a beautiful story. And it is about coping with fear and how to

Speaker 1 1:46:16
what advice did you hear when you were really young, that you only appreciated much later in life?

Dave Chapman 1:46:24
Well, okay, one explicit piece of advice. I went to see my grandfather when he was dying, and I was 13 or something. And my godfather took me any, as Tom says, Do you have a piece of advice for your grandson? And he was a bit senile by then he thought for a moment, he said, hit the ball hard when you can see it. And I actually think about that, because it that long pause, and then when you can see it, because we can’t always see the ball. You know, and when we finally do, glimpse it, go for it. Yeah, it’s good advice.

Speaker 1 1:47:07
You see that linking to the Real Organic Project or the your, your application,

Dave Chapman 1:47:12
of course. And look, I don’t know how I got into this situation, really. I was just a farmer. And I farmed. And that’s what I did. And I got drawn to this, because only I, this is how I felt only I kind of understood this hydroponic thing, because I have friends who are big hydroponic growers, because we shared consultant. And for years, I, I’ve had Dutch consultant for many years, 25 years. And so I knew I got to know these guys, and we were friends. But I understood what was going on, and other people just didn’t. And I thought, well, I better stand up here and speak. And, and so I did. And I just one thing led to another.

Unknown Speaker 1:47:59
What advice do you give often to people?

Dave Chapman 1:48:05
I don’t know if I give advice very often. Be kind. Yeah, actually, you know, it’s what I most treasured with the people I work with is their kindness. So yeah, that’s good advice. simple

Speaker 1 1:48:23
and classic. Yeah. And what’s the best difficult decision you ever made?

Dave Chapman 1:48:36
Gosh fall make this agricultural maybe. So when I, when I started to have children, we made the decision to become greenhouse growers, because up I just the farm was going to fail if I spent time with the kids. And I just didn’t know how people did that. I really didn’t, because I worked all the time as a farmer. And we weren’t greenhouse people so much. Then we had a few greenhouses. But when the season hit, I was gone. And so that first year, I had this baby and I said, I want to be part of this. And we lost money that year. And I thought, I don’t know how this works. So we started to change the farm. And I don’t know that it was the right decision. Because we ended up being in the wholesale market. So now we are I so respect and admire people who have CSA and they have the stable, stable relationship with the people who eat their food. And we have 1000s and 1000s of people eat our food, but I don’t know them and they don’t know me. And so that was a complicated decision. It worked out. Well. We got to because we came around we had a stable crew. It didn’t need so much management or writing that people who do this for a living, they’re very good. And, and I was able to create enough space in my life to be with my kids and when my kids left home as it turned out enough space to do the Real Organic Project.

Speaker 1 1:50:18
And lastly, what’s the best mistake you ever made?

Dave Chapman 1:50:25
Or one of the best mistake I ever made? I’ve made so many I have tried to think of the best one difficult,

Speaker 1 1:50:34
or how about maybe best puts too much pressure, just a notable good mistake that turned into something better, you didn’t see coming.

Dave Chapman 1:50:42
Certainly we could say the Real Organic Project has been a beneficial mistake. I never intended to be involved like this. We started it with a couple petitions, I started to go to some meetings, which were horrendous amount of energy to travel around to these meetings twice a year. And when we did start the Real Organic Project, I did not intend to be the director. I was just getting it started. I was going to be on the board. In the first donor who made enough money, we could hire somebody. I said, Great. We can hire an executive director and he said, Well, I thought you would be the director. And I was like, Oh, thanks. So So I did. And you know, I still am co director with Linley. So she became the first person we hired. Yeah. And and I don’t want to I don’t want to make it sound like I’m sacrificing anything more like my wife, maybe as fat sacrifice some things because it still takes a lot. But I get fed so much by hanging out with wonderful people and learning so much. I learned so much. I’m I’m just learning all the time. I’m reading four books, and I need to read all of them. And it’s hard to find the time to do that. But I get fed a lot. So just as a selfish activity. This is pretty good.

Unknown Speaker 1:52:10
Oh, thank you. That’s it. Yeah.

JM Fortier 1:52:13
Hey, so Dave, just wanted to let you know that I really, really appreciate you coming down. And, you know, we’ll keep promoting and supporting the Real Organic Project. Obviously, it’s in our blood. And yeah, it was great to talk like this. It really was.

Dave Chapman 1:52:28
Thank you jam. And Chris, I had a great time. You’ve been there since the beginning of this. And we’ve always felt felt you with us. So it’s good. You do God’s work. And a lot of people do do God’s work and we just need to support each other so that we don’t it gets people get lonely. And I see it when we started Real Organic. There was this level of depression after that defeat in Jacksonville and people were feeling like organic was going to die. Yeah, I think it was gonna die. I don’t think it will now.

JM Fortier 1:53:04
Great, good stuff. All right. We’ll catch you later. Thank you, right, everyone. Hope you guys are growing. And we’ll catch you next time.

Linley Dixon 1:53:13
Thank you for listening to the Real Organic Podcast. Our movement is growing because you’re subscribing and sharing these podcasts with your friends. So keep it up and leave us a rating and review as well so that others can find us. You can find a video version of this interview on our newly designed website Real Organic project.org or on our YouTube channel. And you can join us every Thursday for a new episode featuring voices from the organic movement. See you next time.