Episode #181
Lisa Held: Walmart, Walanthropy, And The Food System

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Our Lisa Held interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dave Chapman interviews Lisa Held, December 2023 :

Dave Chapman 0:00
Welcome to The Real Organic podcast. My guest today is Lisa held. And I first met Lisa some years back where she interviewed me. And it was you remember that Lisa and the pizza joint in Brooklyn?

Lisa Held 0:12
Oh, on the farm report, was that the first time we met? That’s right.

Dave Chapman 0:16
That’s right. And the farm report, it was kind of an amazing thing. You’re behind a plate glass window and actually a very high quality recording studio that Roberta’s that was it. Yeah. And all the people eating pizza get to watch you. Right. So since then you you’ve been, I think, become quite an accomplished journalist. And you’ve written for a lot of major outlets. And now you’re a senior editor at civil eats, which is a something a platform, I really respect you do tremendous work, and you do tremendous work there. So I was excited to reach out to you because of the series that you’re doing on Walmart because I thought it was so interesting. And and that kind of came on the heels of a lot of talk about regenerative agriculture. So I think we’ll, we’ll blend those those two things. But just one question. You know, I’ve been interviewed by people. And then they ran the story in which I felt that they put in a lot of lies from other people, and they knew they were lies. And I said, Why did you do that? And they said, We had to tell both sides. I said, But you knew they were lying. And they said, Well, we’re not investigative journalists. So I think you are an investigative journalist, just as Peter whiskey at the Washington Post is an investigative journalist, and you’re looking for the truth? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Good. So

Lisa Held 1:46
yeah, I think that’s a lazy excuse, I don’t understand that explanation kind of reporting a lie. For the sake of balance. I think, as a journalist, your responsibility is to always ask for the other perspective, you know, ask somebody that you are, you know, accusing or kind of saying that something about to defend their position, and you know what their perspective is, but if you know if something is a lie, you don’t print it. There’s, there’s kind of this really amazing lesson that is taught in journalism, which is, you know, if you asked if it’s raining outside, and you ask two people, is it raining? And one says yes. And one says, No, it’s your responsibility is not to pray. And Wallace, she said it was raining and he said, it wasn’t raining. It’s to look outside and see, is it raining or not? Right? Yeah, you figure out which one of those is true. And you can you might still say, this person that it wasn’t raining. But then you also have to say, but we checked, and it was, yeah.

Dave Chapman 2:49
Well, we face pretty complicated issues in our food system right now. And I have really been impressed by your very balanced approach to the truth. And I think the Walmart story, the last one was very impressive. And taking a very complicated subject. And not throwing rocks just going isn’t this odd look at this. And you know, this this juxtaposition of these two, almost colliding perspectives from the same? The same group? So let’s, let’s talk about that we’ll get maybe I think we will get to the regenerative, organic discussion a little later on. But I let’s start with, I think it was called will Anthropy. And, and I sometimes talk about wall Ganic. Because Walmart is the biggest vendor of organic food in the world as a retail outlet, and which is an amazing thing, really. And they’re how much how much of the world how much of America’s food gets bought at a Walmart?

Lisa Held 4:03
Yeah, that’s one of the reasons we wanted to do this series, because of the scale of purchasing that happens at Walmart. And there’s, depending on the estimate, at this point, it’s, it’s about either one in three or one in four grocery dollars are spent at Walmart in the US. And I mean, that’s, that’s a staggering number. For one company to control that big of a slice of Americans grocery purchasing. So that was really a big piece of why we started this series, because, you know, if, if all this money is being spent on groceries at Walmart, that just gives them incredible control over the American food system. And we wanted to know what is what does that mean, right? Yeah,

Dave Chapman 4:51
right, right. What does it mean what you know, so let me say that one of the things that we know and something people said to me, yeah, but this is a an incredible thing for people of low income, they can get food. And other people said to me, even here in rural Georgia, we can get organic food at the store the same food that they get in California, which is true that if you’re in a Walmart in California, or one in Georgia, it probably is the same organic. So that’s a plus that people can afford to get food. What Why is it a little more complicated than that?

Lisa Held 5:33
It’s a lot more complicated than that. And it is, but it is a real factor that that is important to consider that, you know, at this point in time, a lot of people who are low income are getting their food at Walmart, and it is the best source in their area for affordable food. And I think it’s complicated for a couple of reasons. First of all, I would ask, you know, your example, in rural Georgia, like, what was there before the Walmart? So you know, maybe now it’s the source of affordable food. But what was destroyed? Before before? What happened? What Why is it the only source of affordable food in that region, and some of the very complicated factors leading up to Walmart being kind of that sole source, you know, might include small grocers being run out of business and small farms that were selling to their communities not being able to hang on anymore because they can compete. And so so that’s one one piece of it. And that’s a huge, we could talk about that one aspect for a long time. And then the other the other big pieces, you know, the reason that Walmart is able to sell at those prices is not because they’re just nicer than every other grocery store, right? Like, they you and I know that in order to drive prices down, you have to cut somewhere, especially if at the end of the day, you’re also making record profits. So why are those prices low? And a lot of times the answer is that the same people who are now you know, needing to access cheaper groceries, because they’re low income, are in some way impacted by this driving down of prices. So maybe they work at a company, that is a Walmart supplier, and Walmart push the prices down. And so the wages they’re being paid are very, very low. Maybe they work at Walmart, I mean, Walmart, you know, there’s been a lot of reporting before mine, on how Walmart for at various points in time has been one of the biggest employers of people who access SNAP benefits. So you know, the taxpayers are actually subsidizing their low wages, and then those people need to purchase their food at Walmart, in a lot of cases. A lot of the impacts from their their supply chain, which I start to get into in my story, could also be impacting people in, you know, for instance, in the food supply chain, if it’s if it’s super cheap foods, some of those impacts are being felt environmentally in communities, maybe, you know, people live near feedlots, and they’re sick, and they have health care bills that they have to pay. So there’s all these ways that prices are driven down in supply chains that impact low income people. And so it’s just a lot more complicated than, well, they sell it cheaper. And so that’s a good thing. Right?

Dave Chapman 8:46
Yeah, yeah, there’s, there’s a, an idea that they sell cheaper because they’re more efficient. But I actually heard of it. It’s definitely part of it. It’s part of it. But it I read an interesting thing that when Walmart opens up a new store in a neighborhood, poverty increases in that neighborhood in that community. And I didn’t know that but you know, that that’s very interesting when you think about it, because it’s an big new employer coming into town.

Lisa Held 9:17
Yeah, I don’t I don’t know. Exactly the study that you’re talking about that that wasn’t part of my, my reporting. I don’t I can’t speak directly to that. But, um, I know there has been over the years kind of mixed results on that, that there’s been a lot of people have looked at the impact on different communities and and I think it varies, but it’s definitely more complicated then. They come in they hire people and and that’s good for the town, you know, right.

Dave Chapman 9:45
Right. So as a supplier if I my little farm was going to try and sell to Walmart. What what do you think that would look like?

Lisa Held 9:57
Um, I mean, based on my reporting, There really aren’t any small farms selling to Walmart. You know, they, over the years, I’ve tried to do that because of criticism that they’ve gotten, you know, around in the early 2000s, there was kind of this shift where they realized they were getting criticized on a lot of friends about their, their sourcing and their supply chains for some of these reasons you and I are talking about. And they started to make kind of commitments and set goals around improving their supply chains. And one of one of those goals was buy from small farms, and not just from these larger, consolidated suppliers. And one thing that my reporting really showed is that that’s just, you know, unless Walmart were willing to kind of fundamentally change the economics of of its business, which it might be willing to do, I don’t know, but they wouldn’t talk to me. So I can’t, the evidence I found is that they haven’t been willing to do that, as far as I know. But they, you know, they tried to buy from small farms, but they then applied the same system that they apply to their large suppliers, which is they, they say, Okay, well, we’ll buy from you at this price, but then we’re going to keep lowering the price we’re going to pay to you. And, you know, year after year, these small farms are trying to scale up in order to meet their volume demands, they’re trying to make it work at the lower prices, just so that they can get this big contract. And at the end of the day, it just, it falls apart, because it costs more, you know that there’s a mismatch of scale, basically, you know, these small firms are operating on really, really thin margins, and they can’t sell at Walmart’s prices with and make a profit, they just can’t, they can’t, a lot of times cover their costs, you know, they’re selling for, for less than the cost of production. So, you know, Walmart tried to do kind of local food, they called it heritage agriculture for a few years. And then they just, it just kind of faded away, it was sort of, well, we tried this, they didn’t say anything about it failing, it just kind of disappeared. If you click kind of you find old news stories about it, and you click the links to the website, they’re just broken, and they don’t exist anymore. And so a lot of companies do this, they make big kind of announcements that and try these things. And if they don’t work, they just kind of, you know, quietly let it fade, to try to, you know, not not have it stamped as a failure. But But I mean, it seems based on my reporting that there was just a mismatch of skill and they can’t, if they want to sell at prices that low and they’re going to pay, they’re only going to pay prices that low for that food, then it’s never going to be enough for a small farm working on those margins, you know, yeah,

Dave Chapman 12:58
yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I would suggest that the quality of the food will be different to, I think, potentially better from the small farm, but maybe that system doesn’t have any way to recognize that or acknowledge it.

Lisa Held 13:14
Yeah, it doesn’t really um, I guess they could, you know, they could charge a little bit of a premium for local at Walmart, but it would still be that premium I think, wouldn’t be enough to acknowledge the difference and actually make it work for the farmer. And I you know, I should say, I mean, I think you know, this better than I do, but a lot of small farms really can’t access grocery markets on all anymore. It’s not just Walmart, it’s you know, any sort of any of the big retailers and grocers it’s very hard for them to establish localized supply chains and part of it is because of the power of Walmart because all the other retail chains are also competing with Walmart so they’re, you know, driving their prices down as well.

Dave Chapman 14:06
Yeah, that’s just what I’ve seen actually. I’ve we used to sell to most of the chains in New England. We sold to Stop and Shop and Hannaford and Shaw’s and, and you know Wegmans and, and most of those have have left us and they mostly have left us because they’ve been bought up by a bigger super chain stop and shops owned by our hold and Hannaford is owned by a hold and Shaw’s is owned by Kroger’s Albertsons, so it’s it’s been amazing to see that we’re now dealing with basically and of course Whole Foods was bought by Amazon we’re basically dealing with three companies for all the end Walmart and and you know, Trader Joe’s, so, yeah, okay. More like six companies for all of New England. and almost none of them are actually willing to buy locally. And that’s a big change from 10 years ago, it really is a big change. Yeah. And I actually think you’re right that I think it’s because Walmart, you know, it’s not that Walmart said all we want to wipe out local agriculture, it’s just they said, We want to provide the cheapest possible food that we can on the shelves. And they did that. And they were very obviously, they’re very good in their supply chain. And the people competing with them said, Oh, my God, we’ve we’ve got to do that, too. And so you know, Whole Foods is now competing with Walmart head on. local coops are competing with whole foods, so everything gets dragged down.

Lisa Held 15:45
Exactly. There’s like a domino effect.

Dave Chapman 15:50
So should this concern us? Right? Is this it’s a really interesting thing. If if Walmart is 30% of the groceries in America right now, would it be a bad thing if it became 50%?

Lisa Held 16:08
I mean, I guess it depends on on your perspective. I mean, if if you think that a more resilient food system involves kind of thriving small family farms, then it would be a bad thing, because I do think as it gets a higher proportion of grocery share, it seems like we’ll have less than less of that consolidation in general, at the top in retail and in processing, it does tend to just squeeze and squeeze. In, especially sort of that mid scale farm, you know, I there’s, there’s always going to be the very, very small local firms that just sell to their neighbors. And, and, you know, do okay, and then there’s the big, but all the stuff in the middle, that’s kind of people really making a living and being able to produce food in really environmentally friendly ways. There, I think we’re gonna have less and less of them. And I yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, if they have more of the grocery market will, it might, I was gonna say, it might, you know, maybe you could make a case that it would be good, because there would be more affordable food for people. But I actually started to correct myself, because there is a lot of research on the fact that more grocery consolidation, in the long run actually often raises prices for consumers. Because if there’s just less competition, eventually companies can start to, you know, raise their prices, and because they have fewer and fewer people to compete with. So yeah, it’s, um, it’s, it’s I do think, I think, in general, like as a How should I say this? I think in general, diversity is a good thing. And that’s like, it almost almost applies to everything, right, like diversity in you know, like in soil that you need a diverse number of organisms in markets. It’s a good thing in it just any sort of system in the world that starts to become really concentrated and not have any to diversity becomes less resilient. And so I do think there if we’re just thinking about the future and having a resilient food system in the face of Climate Change, and all these other challenges that we face that yeah, consolidation and a lack of a kind of further lack of diversity is concerning for Americans and people around the world. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 18:56
In one of the articles that you wrote, and then I read one that you linked to, and it was about monopoly and monopsony, that was a new word for me. Yeah. Could you explain what a monopsony is?

Lisa Held 19:10
It’s sort of a you know having a one very powerful buyer instead of one very powerful seller which is a monopoly right? So there you can either control buying or selling and and Walmart is just kind of creating a monopsony which is just having essentially you know if they’re the only buyer or one of the very few again, it just it’s just there’s very there’s no competition, there’s there’s no diversity of buyers. And so then, you know, people are either forced to farmers and other sellers are forced to either meet their demands or you know, go out of business really like there’s there’s not a lot of other. It doesn’t leave a lot of space for other options. Right,

Dave Chapman 20:00
right? There’s an interesting relationship described between monopolies and monopsony is. And you know that when Walmart becomes consolidated, what does that mean for the suppliers? They almost have to become consolidated to deal with such a giant?

Lisa Held 20:21
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Because I think a lot of people when they read this story, and some people I talked to, in their reporting say, well, it’s not Walmart, like the consolidation isn’t Walmart’s fault, the entire food system has been moving towards a more consolidated industry industrialize scaled up model, right. And, you know, you could point a finger at Tyson and Cargill, you could point a finger at the seed companies, there’s only a few now. And so there it is true that it’s hard to kind of figure out which, if any one player is responsible for all of all of this consolidation. But I do i Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I it makes me think of this one interview I did, and in the course of this reporting, that actually didn’t make it into the story. Because we just had too much and you know, there’s always a lot that gets cut. But I talked to this one rancher Mike Calipari, in Colorado, and, and he’s been an advocate for independent ranchers for a long time and getting higher prices for for cattle ranchers. And he said that he, he was had this example of a situation where he met John Tyson, the head of Tyson in the early 2000s. At a conference, he was that, and he he basically confronted them and said, you know, We’re suing this company are about to buy because of the low prices that are being paid to Randers and and John Tyson said to him, you’re suing the wrong person, you should be you should be suing Walmart, they set the prices. And we just, we just have to basically follow them. And I thought that was really interesting. Not not not that I think that he’s, he’s right. I just think it’s interesting that there’s all this consolidation, and it’s happening throughout and they’re kind of blaming each other for it. And I don’t really know exactly like, if you can say one is responsible for the other, or it’s just been kind of a over time, if you look at any of these, like I said, any of these sectors, the the meatpacking companies, seed companies, retailers, it’s all been kind of moving in that direction. And it all kind of it happened at the same time. So it’s hard to figure out, but it’s, it’s been moving that direction for a very long time. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 22:51
It’s so interesting. It’s sort of like, Well, nobody’s responsible. And yet, it’s inexorable as it goes forward. Somebody suggested that there is a precedent for this, and it was the state run farms in the Soviet Union. And that that was this kind of incredible consolidation of agriculture, where one centralized authority said, This is how it’s going to be. And of course, there and in China, it led to huge famine, it was not successful. I don’t know that this is gonna lead to huge famine, but it certainly seems out of control. And there are a lot of there a lot of costs that aren’t aren’t showing up at the cash register that someone’s going to pay for. That they’re, they’re paying for it. We’re paying for it right now, in terms of health care, and water quality, and air quality and communities. All these things have actual financial impacts. Is the government share any of the responsibility for this happening? In your opinion?

Lisa Held 23:58
I mean, I think when when it comes to consolidation in the food system, you could certainly point to government policies over the last 30 years that have supported a more industrialized, more consolidated system. From you know, crop subsidies that go to sort of the large scale commodity farms that then feed into, you know, the commodity meat system as as animal feed. You could point to Yeah, I mean, you know, everybody always goes back to the sort of Earl Butz like, get big or get out and we just had Sonny Perdue actually, under Trump the secretary he basically reiterated that to dairy farmers is that that’s just the way it the way it works in the US you get bigger you get out. And so yeah, I do think the policies play a role um, A lot of so I don’t really, you know, my focus, and I didn’t get into this in the story at all. So it’s definitely not my specialty. But I know there’s a lot of people working on antitrust policy. And there’s a lot of actually people that I spoke to for this story. But we didn’t get into this like Stacey Mitchell, who believe that the lack of antitrust enforcement by the government over the last few decades has really been a driving factor in some of this consolidation. For sure. So there’s the ag policy, there’s the antitrust policy. And it’s Yeah, it definitely definitely plays a role. Again, that wasn’t the focus of this particular story. But it’s, it’s definitely part of it.

Dave Chapman 25:51
Yeah. Michael Pollan suggested that the policy of cheap food was a way of distracting and avoiding a lot of pushback from, from the fact that people’s living, the living wage, has not been met, that the actual wages that people are getting paid are going down and down over the last 40 years. So their buying power is much less. But if food is cheap, people don’t get so upset about that, of course, they’re not happy, but we can barely even tell this. We’re like the frogs in the pot. The waters getting hotter, but on any given day, it’s hard to notice.

Lisa Held 26:39
Right? That’s, that’s interesting.

Dave Chapman 26:41
Yeah, I thought so too. And and, you know, when when people talk about organic food costing more, it, there’s a there’s a line that goes well, that’s for elites, that’s, that’s for people with money. And I found that usually the people saying that are people with money? You know, people have a lot invested in a system of selling cheap food.

Lisa Held 27:07
And that, you know, that’s one of my sorry, I didn’t mean No, no, go. But I agree with you. It’s always people with money who say that, and I think it’s really condescending tape to be honest. Because, you know, who are we to assume that that low income people don’t want to eat healthy organic food? I mean, I think that’s kind of a, like, of course, there’s a lot of people who cannot afford it, because it does cost more. But to put that as a reason, like, in I would argue that if organic food is is healthier and better for the earth, and like, Shouldn’t that be accessible to everyone? And it’s a very weird assumption that, well, you know, we should produce unhealthy food cheaper, so that we can, you know, give it to people who can’t afford anything else like that. It’s a very, it’s a little bit of a condescending perspective, I think. Yeah. And I and, you know, I grew up in a family, just on a personal level. I didn’t I don’t think I knew the word organic growing up, but we grew organic food, my mom grew it, because we didn’t have money. And, you know, she grew all of our produce. And, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of privilege involved in the fact that, you know, we were not in a city we were in the country where we had a backyard that you could turn into a big garden and but there’s, there’s just a lot of it. That was, that was an interesting line of thinking that I had to confront when I first started covering this because I was like, Oh, ha, like growing up, my mom was always like, we gotta grow our food, because it’s cheaper to do it this way. And, and we didn’t, we wouldn’t buy like she would have never dreamed of buying an input, because that’s expensive.

Dave Chapman 28:55
Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s, let’s, for a minute, go to the other side of this equation, which is the amazing philanthropy of the Waltons, and explicitly their philanthropy to support regenerative agriculture. And you had you had comments that you quoted in in your article about how critically important it was to adopt and build and develop an agriculture that cared about the soil, that sequestered carbon that resulted in clean water that you know, had clean air all of the things actually that organic agriculture does. And and let’s call it real regenerative also does. And isn’t there a funny juxtaposition here of, of the people who are most I’m responsible for pushing the price of food down to where the only possible thing is an industrial model. also advocating and putting their money where their mouth is close to a billion dollars into philanthropy for the alternative.

Lisa Held 30:17
Yeah, I do I find kind of this, this line of questioning really interesting. So, you know, the story that, that I wrote, it really is about kind of three overlapping things, which is like one was Walmart’s regenerative claims and what the company is selling and their impact on the food system. And then is this philanthropy that’s going towards regenerative agriculture? And then like, the intersection, right, like, what what do these things mean together, because at the end of the day, you know, Walmart, and all of its all the wall in philanthropies, the biggest of which is the Walton Family Foundation, they they want to say they do say that they’re completely unrelated, and, you know, separate entities, and they have nothing to do with each other. But um, you know, the money that has been used, that has been put into the food system now to make these improvements is the money that was made. As profit from this, these systems we’re talking about, right, so it’s the same money. And so to me, that’s a really interesting place to start. And I like one thing that really struck me at the beginning of this was the Walton Family Foundation director had gone on a trip to Iowa, to see one of their grant projects where they were doing really, really cool work, helping farmers plant prayer, like native prairie strips and cover crops and, and other conservation practices. And she had this quote in the blog post about, you know, the relentless demand for increased production and higher crop yields has come with a high cost, degraded soil health and lower water quality. And so the with, you know, what she was saying is, we’re here to kind of help fix that. But, you know, in my mind, like, the first question I have that is, but wait a minute, where does that relentless demand come from? Right, and one of the places that came from was Walmart. And so it that is, it starts to, like, hurt your head a little bit? Well, so now, the same money is being used to kind of clean up this, you know, mess that the company’s supply chains were a part of creating? And so it’s like, well, is that is I mean, in the moment? Is it? Is it better that that field now has native prairie strips? Yes, absolutely. But is this like, how we want our systems to work that we just kind of create systems that cause environmental degradation? And then we fix it later? Or should we just create systems that don’t create that degradation in the first place? Right? So it’s, yeah, it’s it’s, a lot of my reporting and questions, were kind of around that intersection and how to make sense out of it. And I will say, I really wish that someone from any of any of the Waltons would have talked to me, they have a long history of just staying very silent. And nobody would talk to me and answer questions about these kind of juxtapositions, or if they see them as at odds with each other. And, and that’s really frustrating, because I want to know, like, how they’re thinking about this, and but but, you know, at the end of the day, they won’t, they won’t talk about it. And so what I’m left with is just kind of trying to figure out the impacts by kind of reporting around and just putting on on the page, what I can find out about about the impact the investments are having, as well, or, you know, the philanthropies having alongside the impact that supply chain is having and like, how do we can we measure them against each other? You know,

Dave Chapman 34:15
yeah, I think it’s one of the big questions that we face Honestly, we’re in a tight spot on many, many issues with climate being in the center, but, you know, the, the Mississippi River, the water is killing people. And that’s from agriculture, you know, and that’s from bad industrial agriculture. And it’s not just killing people. It’s killing fish. It’s killing the Gulf of Mexico. There. We know over and over and over a, you know, California is turning into a desert. We know that the way that we’re doing things is problematic and perhaps fatally, so I mean, seriously problematic, not just a little Oopsy daisy. And I think the question that that is see so many people have is, Well, surely we need to work with the Giants, the giants in the industries to change this, because what we do doesn’t have much impact. And we see Rodale is working with Cargill, on 100,000 acres to take organic, and, you know, good people are working with Walmart to try and help them to do a better job. And I think it’s, it’s very tempting to just go, Oh, those are bad people. Right. But But I think the reality is that we’re all stuck in a bit of a tragic situation that we’re trying to figure out, I’m sure the Waltons are trying to figure it out, too. I understand that. They just got born and in here, they own this empire. And if the Empire doesn’t play by its own rules, maybe maybe it collapses, you know, they’ve created these rules, they’ve they’ve, they’ve led the charge. But nonetheless, I don’t know that Walmart can change Walmart and say, you know, we’re gonna charge more for food, because we know that good food costs more.

Lisa Held 36:13
Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s a really interesting question. I don’t I kind of kind of exist. And that’s, that’s what’s interesting about the this idea that they declared, you know, they’re going to become a regenerative company, because that’s where you start to ask, like, is that like, like, you just said, is it possible for them to, like, fundamentally change the like, would they have to change fundamentally change the business model in order to really make that claim? And would they be willing to do that? I don’t know. And it doesn’t seem like they’re making, they’re taking steps in that direction, based on what’s happened so far. Right? It’s just these little tweaks. And but I mean, it’s, it’s interesting, because some people, you know, I interviewed, like, for instance, Glenn Horowitz at mighty Earth, you know, his, he had a lot to say about, well, they do, like, just as we’re talking about all this power that Walmart has in the food system, because there’s such a massive buyer. Now, they’re in this place where they could use that power differently. And his he, you know, he said, if, you know, Walmart said to Cargill, tomorrow, you know, unless you can show us on paper, that, you know, starting next year, there’s no deforestation in any of your supply chains, we’re gonna pull the meat from our shelves, he, you know, he said, I don’t know if that’s true. But he said, you know, Cargill would do it tomorrow. They that if they’re that big of a buyer that they have some power to exert in the supply chain. And, you know, so far, that’s not the path that they’ve taken, the path they’ve taken, is kind of asking their suppliers to do better and having voluntary, you know, they have this project, and it’s voluntary reporting of, you know, ways that their suppliers are doing a little bit better and their supply chains, and but they’re not really requiring anything of suppliers, or they’re not drawing any lines in the sand. And, you know, Glen, mighty doesn’t say they could, other people will say, they can’t do that. Because to sell it that volume, they wouldn’t, then they wouldn’t have anything, they wouldn’t have enough to sell. Right? Because it that it just wouldn’t exist. So yeah, it’s it’s complicated. Yeah,

Dave Chapman 38:36
it’s very complicated. There is a certain kind of hypnosis that happens, self hypnosis, where we think, Well, this is the way things are. So if these big companies weren’t so big, we’d all starve to death. And I don’t believe that’s true. I don’t believe that’s true. I think a lot of the world feeds itself on very small farms. And we see that small farms can be very productive, and, and perhaps more productive in terms of actually getting the food to into somebody’s mouth. You know, with these big distribution chains, there’s still a lot of waste and a lot of stuff that goes wrong.

Lisa Held 39:16
Yeah. And I mean, 30 years ago, Walmart was barely selling food. I mean, it’s, it is really a new, you’re right. It’s almost like you, you think like, oh, this is just the way things are, and how could we How could it be any different, but these systems are actually fairly new and didn’t exist, you know, just four decades ago. So it’s not I think they’re not as entrenched as it can feel. You know, that you know what I mean? Yeah, I

Dave Chapman 39:49
do. I do. And it’s amazing. I mean, in my lifetime, when I was born, Walmart didn’t exist. You know, it wasn’t even to store So, you know, a lot has happened in those years. And it could be quite different in another 70 years. And we’re not sure how that will be it we sure it will be quite different. So let me let me ask the question that the symposium will be about. We we’ve been inspired by Zephyr Teachout book, break them up. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book. She does great work. She’d she worked earlier with Lena Khan. And you know, they’re working on antitrust work. Yeah, yeah. Lena Khan is now head of the FTC, Federal Trade Commission. So the the vision is, actually there’s a long tradition of this in America that we shouldn’t have too much centralization of power in too few hands. And we can pass laws, and we did pass laws to prevent that. And it wasn’t based on the price going up to consumers. The it was based on keeping democracy viable for citizens. And knowing that when too much power is in too few hands, they control the government rather than the other way around, you know, there’s no no ability to actually regulate them. I don’t think the federal government can do a whole lot with with Walmart or even with Amazon. So the question is, do you think that there’s truth in that, that, that by reducing the the potential size of companies, a lot of things suddenly change for the better?

Lisa Held 41:44
That’s a really hard question. And I think, um, you know, I guess what I’ll say is that I’ve been reporting on the food system for about a decade, and I, you know, all the places I have gone, where you where I’ve observed people, the environment, communities thriving, have been places that are centered around regional, smaller agricultural systems, and I have yet to see an example of, you know, I’m open like I, you know, I, I report it to really smart people who say, Well, if we, you know, scale is good, because we can help so many more people. And if we change the way we farm on, you know, every acre of commodity corn in this country, that’s going to have a much bigger impact than, you know, changing, you know, creating a few more small organic farms. And I’m simple, I am sympathetic to that argument. I think it’s smart. And I again, I understand it, but I’ve never seen a system, I have yet to see evidence of a place where consolidated industrial agriculture, and then that that then, you know, kind of channels into consolidated retail, has really, like, created a thriving environment where people, the people involved in the system are doing great are eating healthy food, you know, making good money, living lives, that they’re they’re happy with, and the environment is is doing okay, like it just I don’t see the evidence. And so I guess, like, I do think so far, like, from what I’ve seen on paper, it seems like the less consolidation there is, and the more that the more we can do to support small mid sized farms and regional systems. And not just regional, maybe, you know, also just farming that reflects the place more, you know, putting putting farms where it makes sense from an environmental perspective. You know, maybe not doing giant dairies in California where we need where we need water, like things like that. I do think like, that argument is just better there. So I at this point, yeah, I think less consolidation would be better for people in the country.

Dave Chapman 44:35
There was I don’t know if you ever heard of the gold Schmidt thesis, but now named Goldschmidt worked for the government and did studies of this in California back in like maybe the 20s 20s and 30s. And he compared two communities that were very similar, and one was completely surrounded by very large farms, and one was completely surrounded by family farms, and looked at the impact on the town. So and let’s just say everybody wanted to live in the one surrounded by family farms, all the metrics that we would have have good community of libraries of nice schools of, let’s say, humane policing, all of those things, you know, low, lower crime rate, all those things were better. And yeah, and the one surrounded by industrial farms was like back to the future, whether you go to the town that’s been destroyed by evil greed. And I mean, this is just the study. And it was very interesting. There’s a guy I interviewed named Tim Wise. I don’t know if have you encountered him? Yeah, I know him. Yeah, yeah, he’s great. And he did, he did a study or quoted a study that was done in Africa, looking at the impact of the Gates Foundation’s Green Revolution that they were taking there. And the results were interesting, which was by their own metrics, by their own goals, of reducing poverty and reducing hunger, every place that they did a big project, those things got worse, not better.

Lisa Held 46:04
Yeah, I did see that. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 46:07
So, you know, case in point of what you’re saying, yeah. Yeah. And

Lisa Held 46:13
it just, I mean, I’ve been on the ground in, you know, in towns in Iowa, where that are just completely, you know, filled with pork CAFOs that feed into places like Walmart and other big retailers. And I’ve been on the ground in on the Eastern Shore, where the commodity poultry industry is really concentrated. And then I’ve also, you know, I’ve been on so many farms in, you know, small farms that are thriving in Maryland, New York, all over. And it’s just, you know, from a human perspective, when you when you see these see communities, like you said, it’s just the, I’ve never, I’ve never been to a town that is, you know, an exam, I’ve no one has been able to show me an example of a place that is thriving, because of this industrial system. It’s like, I’m open to it. You can show it, show it to me, and you know, but it it, I don’t, I don’t know that it exists. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 47:19
Paul homebaked says organic solves problems. And these are the problems that he’s talking about the problems of clean water, and clean air, and a thriving community that all these things are actually, you know that there are real measurable benefits of having an organic base instead of an industrial base. And it’s important to remember that organic actually works, that it works biologically, but that it also works on a human level for serving our communities and giving us good food. It’s so easy to get lost in this. And we confuse good food with cheap food. So, before we we leave, is there anything you’d like to say about that? That collision between that wall Anthropy and, and, and the Walmart empire? Is there any lessons that you’ve learned or questions that you’ve come away with?

Lisa Held 48:25
Um, I think, um, let me let me think about that. Um, I guess. I mean, I think like at this point in time, it’s just hard to know what the impact of all of this Walton family money will be. And, you know, because, you know, we’ve only in this interview really, really mentioned the Walton Family Foundation. There’s also you know, Lucas Walton has built his vision which has a philanthropic arm called builders initiative. And then he also has STG ventures which is an investment firm that puts money into companies that might even include some Real Organic farms, you know, like he’s, he’s funding things like Maple Hill Creamery in the northeast and, and other organic businesses. And and some of his philanthropy is, he did a project, for instance, that mapped the locations of CAFOs. His his work is really interesting. And I think like, what’s, what’s interesting what the question that just I will just continue to ask, I think as as we continue to follow this is like, how, how does that kind of compared to the impact of Walmart supply chains and I don’t have the answer. And I think like I don’t I from the reporting I was able to do like I said, nobody would talk to me. within Walmart or, or these foundations, I got one interview with someone at at builders vision at Lucas Waltons office, and she was an executive there. And she said this thing that really stuck with me, which was, I asked a quite I basically asked her this question like, well, you know, given Walmart supply chains are putting all this money into kind of the cheapest food possible, and you all are putting money into a very different method of producing food over here. Like, what about that interaction? How do you think about that? And, and she said, you know, well, we hope that our, I’m paraphrasing, but she said something like, Well, you know, we’re going to help all these companies succeed, and we’re going to change agriculture, and a rising tide lifts all boats, like, then maybe those companies will be able to be sold at Walmart, you know, sell their products at Walmart, because we’re helping them make it. But I guess my understanding, based on all the reporting I’ve done over the years is that I just I don’t see that happening. I think that the two things, like from an economic perspective are fundamentally at odds. And so I don’t know, like how it all shakes out in the end, unless, unless Walmart really fundamentally changes the way it thinks about it sourcing. So I guess we’ll see what happens.

Dave Chapman 51:36
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, the more that we see some branch of that family trying to support good agriculture, that’s got to be a good thing. But we just can’t be confused by it to go, you know, to understand that Walmart remains a huge problem for all of us.

Lisa Held 51:57
Yeah, and I sorry, one more thing we didn’t talk about day that I think is really relevant to, to the Real Organic Project is just this idea of like the defining of regenerative, I think it is a very kind of fraught moment where that term is being used to describe a lot of different things. And I, you know, obviously, we have regenerative organic, that a lot of people think that regenerative only really applies to farms that start with a base of organic. And then, you know, I was at the AME for climate summit with the USDA, earlier this year, and the companies using the term regenerative you know, we’re Pepsi and Syngenta. And they’re obviously talking about a very different vision for Regenerative. And I think that Walmart and the end, the philanthropy are kind of wrapped up in the middle of all of it, and they’re there. They’re not really like taking any action at this point in terms of like, what becomes the accepted definition of regenerative, but it’s certainly going to impact how people think about regenerative if, you know, if they start calling things on their shelves are generative, or you know, they keep putting money into projects that kind of define it one way or the other, it’s going to have a big impact. And I think that that will impact the ability of small farms and other people trying to define it in different ways. And so that’s just something I think that’s important to pay attention to going forward. Yeah,

Dave Chapman 53:43
I actually think that, you know, that Bull has left the barn. You know, it’s it’s, it’s not a conversation between the small regenerative farmers and Pepsi and Syngenta. It’s not a conversation. There’s

Lisa Held 54:02
just two totally different. Yes. And

Dave Chapman 54:05
one tiny little microphone that the other side encourages? Oh, yeah, let’s amplify that. Because we love that people think that that’s what we mean when we say regenerative, but it isn’t. So, you know, I see a thing in which, in which these kind of huge hulking Godzilla is are coming in and saying we’re in the picture together. And and I actually think that that, that the regenerative pioneers, who believe very much in what I would call real regenerative, are so pleased to see all this attention. And I’m going, No, don’t you see what’s happening? You know, you are going to lose this label as meaning anything you want it to mean, faster than you can imagine. So, you know, what happens next doesn’t seem to me to be like a mystery. I think that there will be some good, you know, Tom Vilsack just gave $3 billion to are companies like Bear and Iowa pork growers and all of that in order to promote climate smart agriculture, I believe some good will come of that. But in the process, they will destroy regenerative and they’re also destroying organic. In the same process. Linley said when she goes to Washington and talks to people in Congress, they say, well, organic is not climate smart, because you till and they don’t know what they’re talking about. You know, but they’ve they’ve read something.

Lisa Held 55:35
I mean, it’s, I will say, Dave, like one of the things that I really noticed this in the last year and couple of years is that, in these the policy conversations in DC, around climate, organic is really absent. It’s not it’s not there at all. Like that aim for Climate Summit. I was really I was really shocked by the fact that organic didn’t even have really a seat at the table. There was almost no representation. And yeah, I just Just an observation for you for oh,

Dave Chapman 56:08
I know, it’s, it’s not a mistake. It’s not accidental. You know, Tom Vilsack went and spoke to the Organic Trade Association just before that conference.

Lisa Held 56:19
I was there too. I was at Boeing. Yeah.

Dave Chapman 56:21
Yeah. So I think he was like, buying a little piece saying, Well, no, you guys didn’t get invited to the big kids table. But I love you too.

Lisa Held 56:29
That’s exactly what it felt like, being there. It was like, kind of like, alright, well, I’ll go kind of, you know, make these people happy over here and make them feel like, feel like they’re important. But then I’m gonna go over here and, you know, hand out the real money. And it’s it. Yeah, it’s it’s a little shocking to me. And I think, you know, probably five years ago, I would have thought that organic would have been kind of leading the sort of climate ag conversations. And that really hasn’t been what what has happened in these policy circles?

Dave Chapman 57:05
Yeah. Yeah, no. Well, there’s so much more to talk about. But but let’s just step on to before we go the Farm to Fork initiative in the EU, because it’s very relevant to everything that we’re just saying. And I know that you follow it and and are aware of it. It’s a very aspirational initiative, reducing chemical inputs by 50% by 2030, increasing organic certified farmland to 25% of the farmland by 2030. Does that? It? Do you think that’s a positive, a positive direction?

Lisa Held 57:48
Um, well, I don’t really to be honest, I don’t know a ton about what’s happening in Europe, because my focus is so much on the American food system, mainly, what I know about Farm to Fork is that American policymakers have rejected it kind of based on what we were, we were just talking about. I was, you know, kind of shocked that by the kind of animosity towards farm to fork from from Vilsack and other policymakers. But I think, I think based on the research, um, you know, increasing organic farmland, I can see no downside to that. And, you know, some, some people will say, Oh, well, you know, the yields are not as high and there’s, but I mean, I did a story a few years ago on organic and climate and I went into it with a very, kind of like thinking about those ideas that people always kind of criticize organic for not having yields that are high enough to make to make up the difference. And, and I was like, really, really struck by all the research on on organic and how much better it performs on all these metrics related to climate. And I think the headline of the of the story, it was literally like something like is organic, good for the climate or something. It’s an old Civil lead story from a couple of years ago, but I just was shocked by how clear the research was, I really went in, you know, kind of ready to say like, Okay, if if it doesn’t, you know, we can say organic, we know that like, having less pesticide in the environment is a good thing and soil, you know, better soil health, good thing, but but we might not be able to say that it’s better for for climate, but I mean, the research that that was in front of me seemed very clear. So I think it’s, yeah, it’s probably a good thing that the EU is trying to shut that way. And I am not sure why. Well, I I am sure I know why in the US that isn’t happening. And it’s because you know, the companies that have The power are not behind organic. Right. And so, yeah, and I mean, like reducing pesticide use? Yeah. Like, what’s what’s the target environment for 25%

Dave Chapman 1:00:14
of the land certified organic and a 50% reduction of chemical inputs to agriculture?

Lisa Held 1:00:21
I mean, 50% reduction in chemical inputs. Yeah, there’s no doubt that that would be transformative. I mean, Nigeria, you know, fertilizers that if that includes fertilizer, I mean, fertilizer use, in terms of nitrous oxide emissions, is just so huge and, and nitrogen getting into waterways, I mean, the the Climate and Water impact that would have would be would be massive. And I honestly, like, I know, we’re trying to finish up. But I, I will say like, one of the things that I’m most focused on as a reporter at this point, is the impacts of pesticides. And I think, like we, there’s a huge, huge focus on climate impact right now, for very good reason, because it is an emergency and we are hurtling towards a cliff, that is very scary. And I really understand kind of the urgency and around climate, and we’re not moving fast enough to reduce emissions in all sectors. But I do feel like, there’s this kind of willingness that is scary to kind of put that ahead of any other impact. And pesticides are one of these things, that is kind of the impacts of pesticides, I think are getting is getting lost in this, this kind of like race to make everything climate friendly. And, you know, at the end of the day, we could reduce emissions, but it’s as if we’re just increasing pesticide use, we’re not gonna have any biodiversity. And I just like, it’s just as dire The end result is just as terrifying. Having literally, you know, just biodiversity collapse. And some of the research on that is really what keeps me up at night. And, you know, I’m doing a ton of reporting on neonicotinoids. And I mean, it the EU is so ahead of us right on that front, they’ve, they’ve banned a lot of the ones that we’re using here. And we just continue to just plant them across, like, basically all of our commodity crop land, these treated seeds, and it is a devastating problem. And I think we haven’t even begun to see the impacts, because it’s just now that that people are even realizing, Oh, we’ve been coding these seeds on every single acre of commodity cropland across the country, and 98% of that is getting into the environment. It’s really terrifying. So I think any way that we can move away from those inputs, is it’s going to benefit people in numerous ways. And it’s, it’s really necessary.

Dave Chapman 1:03:06
Absolutely. Just to speak personally, for a moment, I have three nephews who have gotten cancer, young, and one of them is in the buyout from bear for the glyphosate lawsuit, and he’s got that cancer. And and he did apply glyphosate. So you know, absolutely. They’re all these devastating end of the world collapse of biodiversity, which is almost harder for people to wrap their head around and Climate Change now, I think, yeah, they don’t quite get well, you know, aren’t insects sort of a problem? And you know, that what does that mean? When when we so dramatically reduce our communities? But let me before we go, let me just give you one last chance. Is there anything you’d like to say? Because you got a lot of things you work on? I really respected that you’d like to just mention before we go?

Lisa Held 1:04:06
Um, no, I think we really, we covered so much. And yeah, you just kind of let me go off on the importance of paying attention to the impacts of pesticides. And I think that’s definitely going to be my focus. A lot of focus of a lot of my reporting going forward, because I do think that it’s, it’s really one of the most pressing issues that doesn’t get enough attention in mainstream press. So yeah, I guess I just just look out for more.

Dave Chapman 1:04:44
Yeah, great. Well, let me call out to everybody who is listening or watching. Please check out civil eats and subscribe to it and donate to it and support their work. Lisa, you’re one of the for me one of the more respect investigative journalists in America so I really appreciate the work you’re doing and thank you for talking with me today

Lisa Held 1:05:06
Thank you so much Dave, I really appreciate it.