Episode #259
Nancy Matsumoto: Women And Alternative Food Systems

James Beard Award-winning author Nancy Matsumoto explores the powerful role women are playing in rebuilding our fragmented food system. In her new book Reaping What She Sows, Matsumoto spotlights women farmers, fishers, millers, processors, and community leaders who are forging short, transparent, regional supply chains in stark contrast to today’s long, extractive, opaque industrial model. From grass-fed dairy’s struggles to Indigenous fishing cooperatives and the revival of regional grains, this conversation highlights the ingenuity, collaboration, and courage required to build real alternatives.

Our Nancy Matsumoto interview has been edited and condensed for clarity:

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Nancy Matsumoto was interviewed by Linley Dixon in December of 2025:

Linley Dixon 0:00
Welcome, Nancy Matsumoto. You’re the author of “Reaping What She Sows: How Women Are Rebuilding Our Broken Food System.” Welcome to the Real Organic Podcast.

Nancy Matsumoto 0:09
Thank you, Linley. It’s great to be here.

Linley Dixon 0:12
I would love to learn a little bit about what brought you to writing this book in your life, personally.

Nancy Matsumoto 0:19
I’ve been writing about agroecology, regenerative agriculture, and food systems for many years now. I’ve seen over the years how there are all these gaps in the food system that I call an alternative food system.

Nancy Matsumoto 0:46
First of all, I saw gaps in the supply chain that women and men both were trying to fill, and I saw a lot of amazing women do incredible work on the front lines of rebuilding or fixing our broken food system.

Nancy Matsumoto 1:01
I wanted to show what I call the alternative or alt food system that these women in my book are forging link by link in the supply chain, and put it into stark contrast with the other food system, which has a very long supply chain, is very extractive, very opaque, and is run by Big Food and Big Ag culture.

Nancy Matsumoto 1:25
I think most of us live in a food system that is like the air that we breathe. We just don’t know that we are being manipulated by Big Food and Big Ag. I thought by in each chapter showing a group of really incredible, intrepid women who are working very hard to forge this alternative food system.

Nancy Matsumoto 1:44
Then show how they are rebuilding or building from scratch these short, direct, and transparent supply chains, and then contrast that in each chapter with how the Big Food, Big Ag system works.

Nancy Matsumoto 1:58
Then people might have a light bulb moment, like, “Oh, I get it. These are two choices. They’re very stark.” Because, in all of my writing, you hear “farm to table,” “sustainable,” and “regenerative.” It seems like a good thing, but people don’t really understand what it means, and they don’t have this holistic view of what that system looks like, or how hard it is to build, how hard it is for women farmers to get to profitability, and to get their products to market.

Nancy Matsumoto 2:28
So I wanted to talk about everyone along the supply chain, so it’s not just the farmers, the fishers, and the ranchers, but it’s the miller, the niche meat processor, the packer, the distribution people, the people who provide warehousing, and the people who provide that last mile of transport.

Nancy Matsumoto 2:47
And show that it’s very short and direct, but it still takes a lot of work to build it. That was the idea behind this structure, and wanting to do this particular book.

Linley Dixon 2:59
I loved that I recognized so many names from the Real Organic Project, some of the farmers that we work with too. It was always impressive to me to see how many women were first-generation farmers out there who were choosing to farm with organic practices, and were also really highly educated, and then decided the best way to save the world, the best environmental choice, would be to go out and grow food for their communities.

Linley Dixon 3:25
I loved that you focused on women, because it seems like a much higher percentage of organic farmers are women than in conventional. Is that what you found as well?

Nancy Matsumoto 3:36
Yes, absolutely. You’re a great example. You see it in the work that you do, and I certainly saw it in all the reporting that I did. It’s not to say men aren’t doing amazing work out there, but so many of these initiatives were women-led.

Nancy Matsumoto 3:51
Whenever I would approach a farmer, or rancher, or whatever, and say, “Do you want to be in my book? This is what it’s about,” they would immediately say, “I totally love that it’s about women, because that’s what’s moving the needle in my area of the work that I’m doing.”

Nancy Matsumoto 4:06
I got a lot of validation about this approach, and people seemed to intuitively feel like, yes, this is where change is happening.

Nancy Matsumoto 4:14
Women, at this point in our history, are not the typical leaders of farms. they’re not the owners, they’re not the people who are inheriting, they’re not the people who have the best access to agricultural education. They do tend to be more on the margins and the periphery.

Nancy Matsumoto 4:33
When you need big systemic change, it’s not going to come from the powerful center or the top. It’s really going to come from those margins, where people are looking to innovate, realizing that the system isn’t working, and trying to figure out how to make it better, and are more in a position where they can take risks. I think it’s a lot of things that go into making women a really powerful force in this movement.

Linley Dixon 4:57
I’m curious how you found some of the people that you wrote about. I recognized Abby Corace, the dairy farmer up in Vermont, and Dru Rivers, and Konda Mason, and Jubilee Justice, and Karen Washington. These are all people that we’ve interviewed. I’m curious how you found them.

Nancy Matsumoto 5:10
Yeah, so many great women, all in different ways, really. First, I have a long history of reporting. Some of them I had talked to before for different stories, and wanted to go back to. Corey Carmen is one of them.

Nancy Matsumoto 5:22
Then some of them, like Konda Mason, I think I was reporting on a Growing Culture event, and she was one of the farmers in that conversation. I immediately recognized what she was doing as totally fitting in with this book.

Nancy Matsumoto 5:41
A lot of it was just doing research and talking to people I know, and having them refer me to other people. Some examples were, I had a few ideas for the regenerative winemaker, and some didn’t pan out, and some I couldn’t reach.

Nancy Matsumoto 6:00
So I just talked to so many people, and ended up finding a really perfect person, I think, for the book, Alice Anderson in Santa Barbara. The Mezcal makers, too, Zena Cantan, came from a long chain of research and referrals to different people.

Nancy Matsumoto 6:20
But then I also have really trusted people who have been working in this field for a long time, like Kathleen Finley at the Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, who is a super-connector. She suggested a lot of people.

Nancy Matsumoto 6:34
My friend Mary Cleaver, who is sort of an OG in the good food movement in the New York area She also is connected to so many people. Everyone knows her, so she was a great source of suggestions, all really wonderful women. So just a lot of different ways.

Linley Dixon 6:56
I love that you took it subject by subject based on the product and the type of farm that they were. I was curious, if you wanted to just highlight a couple. As I’m visiting these farms, the stories really stand out. Are there a couple that you just want to highlight and tell their stories?

Nancy Matsumoto 7:14
Yeah. From produce, there’s Veritable Vegetable. Full Belly Farm is an amazing story. It started at, basically, the same time as EcoFarm was starting.

Linley Dixon 7:26
Forty plus years ago.

Nancy Matsumoto 7:27
Forty-five years ago, Dru, right there at the beginning, met her husband, Paul, I think, at the second-ever EcoFarm. Then to think that they have been going on as long as that, and built this incredibly diversified farm, with so many different product lines.

Nancy Matsumoto 7:46
It’s really a model of how you can be a completely organic farm and be in this alt food world, and yet have an amazing reach from over 1,000 CSA boxes, but also just so many things: flowers, value-added products, a lot of it.

Nancy Matsumoto 8:06
It’s a good role model, I think, for young farmers who are just thinking, “How am I going to make it work, and how do I make the economics work?” It shows that it is possible.

Nancy Matsumoto 8:17
I really love the story of Sonia Strobel, in the “Fish at the Oceans” chapter, because she’s someone who has built her own alt fish system from the ground up. First, by marrying into a fishing family, and for the first time in her life, tasting really good seafood, even though she grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, right on the water, because she wasn’t getting local catch; it was not possible.

Nancy Matsumoto 8:44
When she realized how financialized the fishing industry had become, how huge it was, and how it was just controlled by gigantic companies that were really trying to extract money out of it, she saw it as a private equity kind of play, and thought, “We should be able to get food direct from fishing families.”

Nancy Matsumoto 9:04
She started her own little fish CSA, called Skipper Otto, named for her father-in-law, and then just built it from 40 subscribers to now 8,000 across Canada, representing fishing families in three provinces.

Nancy Matsumoto 9:22
It’s kind of like a lot of these women didn’t know what they were doing. It was learning as they went, figuring out, “Okay, we have a market. If we can process it right after it’s caught, flash-freeze it, we can start distributing it farther, reaching more people, adding more people to our fishing families.” I love that she really targeted Indigenous women fishers, who she felt…

Nancy Matsumoto 9:57
Then there’s a whole long history in Canada of the fisheries and how, outside the mainstream, they have been put aside. She really tried to make it as inclusive as possible, spending months and months building relationships with women who are not inclined to trust a white woman who is just coming in and saying, “I want to help you.”

Nancy Matsumoto 10:18
So much of it is about relationship building. But those are a couple of cases… There are so many good stories in the book, it’s hard to pick.

Linley Dixon 10:29
I love that you included Abby Corace when you were talking about the dairy struggle, because that’s an issue that the Real Organic Project has taken on. We’ve talked with Abby quite a bit. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you saw in the grass-fed dairy community, the dairy coming in, and that struggle.

Nancy Matsumoto 10:49
Abby’s a wonderful spokeswoman. She’s a generational dairy farmer – I think fifth-generation, maybe. It really felt that that group of grass-fed dairy farmers really ran the gamut, from first-generation farmers to generational.

Nancy Matsumoto 11:25
What I loved about this chapter is I was able to connect with this group that was so tight-knit and would meet on Zoom regularly to share techniques, to talk about what was going on with their herd, but a lot of it was really mutual support, because this was an incredibly tough time for small dairy farmers like that, who are all grass-fed grazing.

Nancy Matsumoto 11:37
It was the most heartbreaking chapter to report and write, because I worried about the mental health of some of these farmers. They were not getting paid what it takes to produce the milk, so they were really underwater.

Nancy Matsumoto 11:55
You could see Abby’s father, who’s such an amazing dairy farmer, really picking and choosing his words very carefully when he was trying to explain that this was the case. Then Abby is so passionate, and is trying to juggle motherhood, children being the next generation.

Nancy Matsumoto 12:20
What I saw was a lot of really tough decisions being made. Some of the people in the group had to actually reduce their herd size, because counterintuitively, they were going to probably have a better chance at being profitable, because it was going to just cut down on expenses.

Nancy Matsumoto 12:39
The tough thing is, you’re always trying to balance creating milk with regenerating the soil. A certain amount of energy has to go into the soil, and a certain amount of that grass energy produces milk, but you need that balance. You want to really have beautiful regenerative pastures, but you also need to be profitable. That path toward profitability is so difficult.

Nancy Matsumoto 13:08
The story I tell is of organic starting at the beginning of, sort of, the organic milk boom, when there was a real premium. Abby’s father himself says he got into organic because of the premiums, then realized it was the absolute way he should be farming. It was the way his father believed in farming, and it all made sense to him.

Nancy Matsumoto 13:35
A lot of farmers, when they first got into it, were doing very well because they were kind of riding on that organic premium. But then what happened was the incursion of very big dairy and the creation of what many of my sources called organic-in-name-only dairy.

Nancy Matsumoto 13:53
It had the organic label slapped on it, with giant herds mostly in the West. Then there was the pulling out of Danone from the Northeast, because it was just going to be cheaper and more efficient to grow in the western part of the United States. All of these things sort of compounded.

Nancy Matsumoto 14:16
There was also this period where farmstead cheeses were a really great way to profitability. You could do that value-added piece and keep afloat. This wonderful consultant that I spoke to, Rose Wilson, told me how that was a panacea for a while, and then the bottom fell out of that market. All she was doing was writing bankruptcy exit plans for people, and it was depressing.

Nancy Matsumoto 14:39
I kind of zero in on the difference between the way the American dairy supply system works and pricing, and the way it does in Canada, which is a system called supply management. They are actually carrying about matching supply with demand.

Nancy Matsumoto 15:02
The reason so many commodities in the U.S., and in a lot of parts of the world, are such boom-and-bust is because no one does that. There’s either too much or too little, and prices are very volatile, and the farmer really can get burned and left holding the bag.

Nancy Matsumoto 15:24
When I reported this chapter, it was an extremely depressing time for these farmers. But the good thing is that after the book went to print, I’ve talked to several of them, and things have improved. A lot of it is because of some of the people that I mentioned in my book, who are involved on the legislative level, have really gone to state government.

Nancy Matsumoto 15:52
They’re working on the federal level too, to say, “Look, this is not working. We’re all losing money, and we’re all going to go bankrupt.” I’m talking to Organic Valley about it, and they’re trying to fix their pricing. A lot of different parties came on board to try to make it better.

Nancy Matsumoto 16:14
What I’ve heard is that it’s not so dire now. Again, it’s this cyclical nature. I don’t know if that’s what you’re hearing, because you said you’ve been working with Abby and the dairy farmers, but I’d be interested to know what your take on the current situation is.

Linley Dixon 16:33
We talked to a lot of the dairy farms in New England when Horizon Organic and Danone pulled out of sourcing. They were selling milk all over New England as Horizon Organic, but they weren’t sourcing from there. It was kind of a slow build, because what you were talking about with the cheesemaking – they had farmers with contracts that allowed some of their milk to be diverted for cheesemaking.

Linley Dixon 17:00
Then, as a way to cut costs, for the small farms having to go and visit all these small farms and just get a small amount of milk, they basically wrote up contracts that said, “You can no longer divert some of your supply for cheesemaking. It has to all come to us.” These contracts are what caused so much strain on the dairies.

Linley Dixon 17:25
I haven’t heard that it’s gotten better, because the organic CAFOs out West are only growing and consolidating. We’re talking 15,000-cow dairies. They’ve got pictures on the cover of their milk cartons of a cow on pasture. There’s really no way to differentiate.

Nancy Matsumoto 17:44
The greenwashing is terrible. I write about that too. It’s so hard for the consumer. Abby’s father was saying, “Look, if you go to a store and you see Organic Valley or Horizon Organic, you can be sure that Organic Valley was a local farmer. You don’t have that guarantee with Horizon Organic; you’re not supporting local.”

Linley Dixon 18:03
The problem, though, is that as the system consolidates, some of these brands are forced to actually use the same processor. That guarantee is no longer necessarily there for them, because a lot of the local processing has gone away as well. So milk does get pooled.

Linley Dixon 18:27
Maybe you could talk a little bit about the nutritional benefits, why it even matters to the customer for their health. There are a lot of environmental reasons why grazing is something we want to support. You can talk about the health benefits as well.

Nancy Matsumoto 18:42
University of Vermont – I believe it was Heather Darby and Sarah Flack – were involved in a study. It’s a long, ongoing study about the nutritional superiority, or difference, between grass-fed organic and conventional.

Nancy Matsumoto 18:42
Their results have been very promising so far. Everything from the organoleptic aspects, like mouthfeel and richness, to actual linoleic acids – the fatty acid profile – is much healthier. That’s true of grass-fed beef as well. When you’ve got animals grazing on grass and they’re accessing this rich, very diverse soil, it’s just way more nutrient-dense.

Nancy Matsumoto 19:34
I think that’s an area where a lot of research is going on, and I think we’ll be seeing more. But the preliminary studies definitely show that these conjugated linoleic acids are much more beneficial in the profiles, and it’s a real difference.

Nancy Matsumoto 19:48
I think people knowing that, and then knowing that these animals are living a really natural way – they were meant to be brought up on grass and not on grain. Then the environmental benefits of drawing down carbon in the soil, increasing moisture retention, climate resilience – just making the farm more resilient for climate change as well – all of these things.

Nancy Matsumoto 20:19
I try to show the multiple benefits of these alternative food systems, and on so many different levels, they’re just so much better than big agriculture or conventional food. Really trying to get people to see that everything is interconnected.

Nancy Matsumoto 20:37
It’s humans, it’s human health, it’s the richness and vitality of rural communities where these farms are located, it’s the way the animals are treated, it’s the many environmental co-benefits of growing this way. I’ve talked about how important it is for me to belong to a food coop and to go to the local farmers market, because this is my community, and it’s the highlight of my week to do that.

Nancy Matsumoto 21:09
I just think on human, scientific, environmental, animal rights, and kind of spiritual levels, all of these realms come together. It’s just really a powerful thing to support. If you have children and you’re thinking about the future health of your family, it’s very important too, because of these kinds of nutritional benefits that we’ve talked about.

Linley Dixon 21:39
I’m curious. A lot of farms are able to direct market, like you talked about Dru Rivers at Full Belly Farm and the CSA model. For dairy, for example, it’s a lot more difficult – you have to have processing on the farm. Grain farmers, it’s more difficult to do that as well.

Linley Dixon 21:52
What is sort of the next step beyond that direct customer, Know Your Farmer relationship? What are some of the strategies that these alt food systems can use in order to find markets and find the people who actually want to buy their food outside of direct marketing?

Nancy Matsumoto 22:18
I talk a lot about connecting networks across state borders and even international borders, through knowledge networks and community building. What’s really amazing is to see how small the world is. I was at a farm dinner in Rhode Island, sitting next to a fisherman who was trying to create his own direct consumer-supported fishery.

Nancy Matsumoto 22:43
I mentioned Sonia, and he said, “Oh, I love her. I know her.” We talked about her story, and he said, “I’m really happy to talk to you. It’s sort of validated that I’m on the right path – that I can do this.” Sonia is involved in these national organizations.

Nancy Matsumoto 23:07
Canada is linking with the American Local Catch, I think it’s called. What they’re doing is trying to network this movement so that you might live in Vancouver, but you can help people in Rhode Island build their network.

Nancy Matsumoto 23:31
Not necessarily that you’re trying to grow things and become a long chain that mimics Big Food, but that you’re going to have a series of small- to medium-sized networks that are really in communication, sharing knowledge, sending people to visit each other, to learn from each other, and to help spread this word about this way of growing and eating.

Nancy Matsumoto 23:58
I saw it a lot in the grain world too, where I talk about the baker Jon Woodward in Toronto, being very close to the people at Washington State University Bread Lab, and having this social media group that’s international called Imagine Biscuits. She has all of these like-minded bakers in the UK who are part of their regional grain sheds.

Nancy Matsumoto 24:23
I said to Dawn, “I’m going to London. Which bakery should I go to?” She gave me the names of several. I’m going to write about them to show how what they’re doing is very similar. Again, the message of the book is: wherever you live, if you really look around, you’re going to find this alt food system in your backyard, and you’re going to be able to support it.

Nancy Matsumoto 24:45
It’s not that I want to see things getting massive, but that I want to see these knowledge networks linked, helping and supporting each other.

Nancy Matsumoto 24:57
I guess just having the average person be able to conceptualize that this is a thing – that there is this growing alternative way of thinking about growing, sourcing, and eating food that is way better for them and our planet. I don’t know if that answers your question, but…

Linley Dixon 25:17
Definitely. One of the scariest things to me is that, as some of these organic pioneers are transitioning out of farming and retiring, that knowledge base is disappearing. Some of the farms are not handed down to people who necessarily have the knowledge that the farmer, who has been doing it for 40 years, had. It’s been hard to watch that happen.

Nancy Matsumoto 25:46
It was Abby’s mom who said to me, the peer-to-peer learning is the most important and the most satisfying. What they like the most about being in Organic Valley is having these farmer meetings, getting together, and sharing knowledge. Whether it’s dairy or ranching, I hear that from everyone – that’s what really gets them excited and is joyful for them.

Linley Dixon 26:16
Yeah. I feel so grateful. I’ve even had that just through the connections that we’ve made being part of the Real Organic Project. Dave Chapman, who’s my co-director, has been just on the side, such a mentor to me in growing tomatoes on our farm.

Linley Dixon 26:32
I really think that elder-younger connection can save 40 years of mistakes by just talking to me about what worked and what didn’t. I really feel that that’s an important part of the story – how to do that transfer of knowledge.

Linley Dixon 26:51
We often talk about farmers of high integrity and their systems, but we forget that there are so many different links in the supply chain to find distribution that has integrity and shares these values of supporting a more regional supply chain. There’s the retail side. I’m just curious if you could talk a little bit about the vital role that these other links in the supply chain always play.

Nancy Matsumoto 27:22
I feel like there are a lot of unsung links to take grain, to start with. You would like the story of June Russell – it’s so wonderful – really having to re-regionalize the grain system of the Northeast. Or Amber Lambkey at Main Grains, same thing.

Nancy Matsumoto 27:41
Farmers were no longer growing small grains because everything had shifted to the Midwest with the commoditization of bread flour and the bread industry. Even though it would be beneficial for them to grow these small grains as cover crops or in rotation, it was really hard to get the farmers to even see the benefit of it.

Nancy Matsumoto 28:05
It was coaxing – in Amber’s case, going to them and saying, “Okay, will you do this for us?” But also saying, “What is our plan B going to be?” because she didn’t want them left in the lurch if it turned out not to be profitable.

Nancy Matsumoto 28:18
Similar to when I wrote about sakes. Sake makers were trying to get farmers to grow heirloom varieties of sake rice because they made beautiful sakes with much better flavor. But just like all heirlooms, they’re lower yield, much harder to farm, and to cultivate. No one wanted to do it. Some people were paying premiums out of their own pocket just to get the supply chain started.

Nancy Matsumoto 28:49
You see it at the farmer level. Amber couldn’t find the old, beautiful millstones that were used in the old days, so she had to go to Austria to research them and source her first mills. I’ve talked to many farmers: when you’re doing small-to-regional, you can’t even get the combine or the equipment, because it’s all been supersized. You’re talking about those massive combines of the Midwest.

Nancy Matsumoto 29:19
One farmer – Mary Cleaver’s husband – had to get his little combine from Ohio and have it shipped to New York. So many things that the supply chain has atrophied. It’s disappeared, and getting it back online is really hard.

Nancy Matsumoto 29:37
Mai Nguyen, who is a farmer in California, has a wonderful project where she wants to help small vegetable farmers also add on small grains. But it means helping them buy the equipment and then teaching them, giving the technical knowledge of how to repair that equipment. Really, there are so many steps to creating the really diversified, small-farm system that you want.

Nancy Matsumoto 30:05
It’s very thoughtful people like Mine, who’s thinking, “Okay, how can we plug these holes in the supply chain and make it as efficient as Big Ag?” Big Ag is completely vertically integrated and so seamless because it’s only profit-driven.

Nancy Matsumoto 30:22
It’s like, “How are we going to do it and make the most money out of it?” You need to have the same efficiency here, but it’s in service of regenerating the land, feeding people much more nutritious and delicious food, and revitalizing community.

Nancy Matsumoto 30:39
One of the obstacles for what these women are doing is they’re doing so much that is unpaid – all those ecosystem services, which Big Food and Big Ag made huge profits on by extracting and basically externalizing all those costs.

Nancy Matsumoto 30:56
That’s part of the David-and-Goliath picture that’s going on – they’re doing a lot of really good things, but not necessarily getting paid for it. Those are just a few examples of gaps in the supply chain that take so much effort and thoughtfulness to fill. It’s very hard work.

Linley Dixon 31:21
Even just as an eater, it could even be the same product that you’re buying from a local cooperative, versus a big chain, and just thinking about, “Does this retail outlet actually create some shelf space for a regional product that’s available seasonally, or have they stopped doing that?” Even demanding those types of things. Are there other things that you can think of that eaters can do to support it?

Nancy Matsumoto 31:50
Yeah. I was just doing a story for my local Co-op on this great cocoa cooperative based in Ottawa, and they were talking about how they tried to add on new products. The whole battle of just getting retail space was a huge unforeseen barrier and one of the things that made them pull back on some of the new products, so that retail end is really hard.

Nancy Matsumoto 32:15
I talk about the role of people like chefs in really getting the message out, seeing local grains and saying, “This is why I’m doing it,” because there are now role models, or people who look to chefs to see what they’re doing. They’re trendsetters. I talk a little bit about that chef piece.

Nancy Matsumoto 32:36
I try to make the book as actionable as possible: How can we as individuals move forward the alt food system? I give a lot of tips, everything from going to your local grocery store and saying, “Why can’t we devote a shelf to this local farm or this local producer,” and really trying to just push them to do more local procurement and saying, “We want this, and we want to support them.”

Nancy Matsumoto 33:07
I think that kind of thing can really help managers be more receptive to it now because they have gotten the message about people wanting local and organic. It’s better coming from the grassroots up. Then when you get to the corporate level, the corporations who are all now touting regenerative products, because they realize that it’s a catchword, consumers are going to buy it. They can charge a premium.

Nancy Matsumoto 33:33
But the greenwashing is so rampant. It should be a grassroots movement from the bottom up. So talking to your local grocery store, if your child is in a charter school, or you’re on the staff of a hospital, or you’re on the staff of a college, “How can we get that procurement piece to address small and medium-sized farms?” That’s a really huge way to get lots of stuff moving in the right direction from the alternative food system.

Nancy Matsumoto 34:14
I think food policy is so important. If your community doesn’t have a Food Policy Council, maybe you could try to start one. If they do have one, you should see what they’re up to and get involved and see if you can help push your community to more local sourcing.

Nancy Matsumoto 34:33
There has been a huge loss with the cutting of the Farm to School program. That was a huge amount of money that was really moving massive amounts of produce from local farms to schools. When you look at the amount of money that school food buying amounts to… I think I heard the number the other day, like $148 billion.

Nancy Matsumoto 34:58
It’s a huge amount of money that goes to buying school food. You can imagine, if you start getting schools on board with local and organic, that’s really powerful. A lot of different things that people can do.

Nancy Matsumoto 35:14
One farmer in my book gave the example: Her son is in a college dorm. His whole floor opted out of the meal plan. They pooled that money, and they started getting weekly shipments from a local organic farm. There was a lot of community building, because they would all take turns cooking together. They really loved it, and it was a great success.

Nancy Matsumoto 35:40
So many more colleges now have farms on them. I really love seeing that too. Can our college farm feed us?

Linley Dixon 35:53
That’s so much in there. I love that you focused on the chefs. I saw that Dan Barber was able to, give a recommendation from your book and a nice quote. We interviewed him extensively about bread. I remember having a discussion with someone about… they were just outraged that there was a $12 loaf of bread, and I knew the story behind that loaf of bread – that it was all local, small grains.

Linley Dixon 36:22
I’m curious if you have a good answer. I definitely took it on, but what might be your answer to somebody who’s outraged about the choice to have that $12 local, organic bread on the shelf?

Linley Dixon 36:37
It’s not that that’s what everybody is paying, but at least to even have that option there, and why it might be, if you can afford it, justified to spend $12 on a loaf of bread. I wonder if you can answer it better than I did.

Nancy Matsumoto 36:50
I write about the affordability and the accessibility part. Grass-fed beef is another example of something that can be quite expensive. I was talking to Athena Pettit, who’s in charge of the sustainability issues at New Seasons in Portland.

Nancy Matsumoto 37:08
We were talking about how every single person, including me, makes trade-offs when they’re at the supermarket: “I’m going to put my organic dollars to X, Y, and Z, because that’s a priority for me.” For me, it would be produce, meat, fish, and proteins. Maybe, like my co-op, we have big discussions about the organic toilet paper.

Nancy Matsumoto 37:33
There are so many things that you can put money toward regenerating and doing good, but we all have a limited budget, and we’re all making choices. I would say, for me, I think these kinds of $12 loaves – I don’t know if I paid that much. I don’t think I do, but these…

Linley Dixon 37:51
…the more you know, the more you want to support. It’s like, the more educated you are about toilet paper, you realize you want to avoid cutting down the boreal forest. So it’s just like you want to support all of these things.

Nancy Matsumoto 38:03
Absolutely. You’re picking and choosing all of the time. I think with the bread, the fact that I know that I’m supporting a regional grain shed and taste – I think taste is such a huge thing. They’re just worlds apart.

Nancy Matsumoto 38:19
Something like this, locally grown, milled, and well-baked bread – you just can’t compare it to a supermarket loaf. That alone, I’m willing to shell out more money for because of the happiness it brings me and the feeling that I’m supporting a local grain shed. I would encourage people…

Nancy Matsumoto 38:42
My co-op sells all the same flowers, and it’s not that hard to make bread, and one of the most fun things to do is make it yourself for a fraction of that $12 and really enjoy delicious bread. It’s like the way I say, the best thing is to have your own garden and grow those vegetables. The next best thing is to go to your local CSA or farmers market.

Nancy Matsumoto 39:05
I think it’s all about, “How can we be part of this movement in a way that our budget allows?” Maybe you’re not going to buy the $12 loaf every week. Maybe you’re going to buy it, whatever, once a month, or once every two months, and you’re going to try experimenting with your own baking and see what recipes you can put into your rotation and improve your own diet that way.

Nancy Matsumoto 39:32
Also, the more we support and grow these alternative food systems, the more there’s going to be that sort of volume, the scale, the efficiencies, and the price coming down, because there’s just more of it happening and more of it moving. It becomes not so much the alternative, but the mainstream.

Nancy Matsumoto 39:52
So I want to see conventional and alternative come together so they’re really sharing a lot of really good practices that make it much more democratic and affordable. But that access piece is real.

Linley Dixon 40:08
Yeah. Even if you buy one loaf a week and have less bread, and then, like you said, the nutritional content in that bread is going to be so different than something that’s just made from white flour. That’s something that you can take into account as well.

Nancy Matsumoto 40:23
With meat, I talked to a great salumi maker, and I don’t need a big steak. I can just get some of her salumi and have it on the side of the plate with a lot of grains and vegetables, and be really satisfied because it’s so delicious.

Linley Dixon 40:37
I’m curious, if you want to talk a little bit… You mentioned a bunch of add-on labels, including the Real Organic Project in the book, and you talked about Regenified and Regenerative Organic Certified, and all these third-party certifications. Would you talk a little bit about the role that they’re playing?

Nancy Matsumoto 40:54
It sort of comes out of the discussion in the book about how rampant greenwashing is and how hard it is for the consumer to know what is real and what is not, and what really is going to be healthy and nutritious and does all the things it claims to do.

Nancy Matsumoto 41:17
The ideal is, you know your farmer. You talk to them. We can’t all do that, obviously. Then the next is going to a reputable place and seeing all these third-party certifications. This is why there are so many that have popped up, because they realize that there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of, “How do I know this is legit?”

Nancy Matsumoto 41:41
I think the problem now is there are so many of them. One of the things that I encourage people to do is look up brands, because there’s a lot on the internet that you can find out about. There are a lot of brands where there have been consumer advocacy organizations that actually have lawsuits against them because they’re not literally living up to their labels.

Nancy Matsumoto 42:11
I won’t name names, but if you’re wondering if something seems too good to be true at this price point, you can Google it and see what you find. One of my sources, Lisbeth Pacheco, who is an amazing Guatemalan woman who’s doing direct-to-consumer at her little roastery in Florida, is getting beans from small cooperatives.

Nancy Matsumoto 42:05
This woman, [inaudible 42:35], that I visited, just roasting and selling really fresh beans. One of her lines was, “If the price and the marketing seems too good to be true, it probably is.” The other hint she gave was, “The more actual facts and information you can find on the label, the better.”

Nancy Matsumoto 42:55
If you just have one little line that says 100% whatever, eco-certified or grass fed, you might wonder. But if you see a lot of information, the more information, the better you can really feel some confidence.

Nancy Matsumoto 42:55
But I also encourage people not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just be frozen, like, “I can’t buy anything because how could I have complete knowledge of what’s going on?” You have to make the most informed choice. Try to read as much, learn as much as possible.

Nancy Matsumoto 43:26
I was curious about these hemp hearts once. There was conventional, but then there was organic. I called them up, and I had a really interesting discussion with them, and it really clarified a lot of things. Depending on how much you want to get into it, you can dig up a lot of information yourself.

Nancy Matsumoto 43:30
But again, these labels are… I mentioned Regenified, and how they’re very outcomes-based, and that’s one of the things that is touted as being something much more solid and meaningful than some of the other certification criteria.

Nancy Matsumoto 43:30
I also mentioned Regenerative Organic Certified, because they’ve been growing and doing a lot and are backed by three leading companies in sustainability: Patagonia, Dr. Bronner’s, and Rodale.

Nancy Matsumoto 43:45
But I am curious about the Real Organic Project. I want to just hear more about that from you, because I didn’t mention it, but I know that it’s something that’s really important.

Linley Dixon 43:48
It’s probably grown quite a bit since you did your research on the book. I’m going to have to call out Regenified. It’s me that’s doing this, not you, but I can’t let it go in a podcast without saying that Regenified does a lot of no-till farming with chemicals. That has actually been shown not to increase carbon over time. They’ve really done those studies.

Linley Dixon 45:05
It’s something that we are not promoting – that label. They’re just concerned about the outcomes. Process-based certification is how organic has always been. I can prove that my carbon levels are higher. It is a really difficult thing for farmers who have maintained soil organic matter over generations to say, “Well, I’m getting more organic matter.”

Linley Dixon 45:28
Obviously, it fluctuates with time of year. Even at the same time of year, if you send it to two different labs, you’ll get different results. Saying “we can know these things with certainty” is a really big concern of mine with the regenerative movement, which is so focused on outcomes and not looking at the process of how they get there.

Linley Dixon 45:47
First of all, I’m concerned that outcomes are real, but I also think that how you get there is really important.

Nancy Matsumoto 45:54
That’s very interesting. Thank you for adding that. I didn’t know that. Again, it’s an example of your reporting, and there’s always stuff that you’re not going to know, or you’re not. It’s very tough.

Linley Dixon 46:07
Like you said, there’s a fee of these certifications, and the devil’s in the details. I always look at whether or not they allow chemicals. Most of them say “reduced,” but to me, that’s too wishy-washy. I prefer organic certifications.

Linley Dixon 46:27
But I do think that’s interesting – this whole shift away from processes to “we’re going to prove it.” Ecology is a very complex subject, so I worry about how they’re going about trying to prove…

Nancy Matsumoto 46:43
Yeah, they’re trying to give that consumer certainty, like actual numbers, statistics, and outcomes. But I agree the process is so important. That also can be wishy-washy, to break down, describe, and verify.

Linley Dixon 47:01
Especially if the processes aren’t being enforced, like you discussed. You brought up the contentious hydroponic issue – how the Real Organic Project was formed. I’m curious, just as an eater and not a farmer, how did that hydroponic issue land for you when you were researching it?

Nancy Matsumoto 47:00
I’ve always wondered, and it’s something that I would love to write more about, because Ontario, Canada, where I live, is a huge industry, and I want to know more about it. I always was a little skeptical. They don’t compare to the late summer tomatoes that you get – the organic heirloom tomatoes.

Linley Dixon 48:51
Yeah, no doubt.

Nancy Matsumoto 48:52
That’s in a class of their own, but it’s sort of like if you live in a cold climate like I do, and you want a decent tomato, this is an option. I always wondered about it. I do believe that the nutritional aspect is never going to be the same if it’s not soil based.

Nancy Matsumoto 48:06
I grapple with this in the book, because some of my sources tell me that a lower load of pesticide and very efficient water use tends to be the case. At least the companies that were being discussed with me treat workers really well, and even people in this good food movement are accepting it.

Nancy Matsumoto 48:35
I know that there was that huge rift over whether it should be allowed to be certified organic. I live in Canada, where hydroponics are not allowed under that label, and the EU is the same, and I think I would prefer that. Then just have very transparent labeling: “This is hydroponic. These are the benefits of it.”

Nancy Matsumoto 48:53
Just explain it to the consumer, because I’m also very conscious of not everyone being able to afford these outrageously priced heirloom tomatoes. Everyone should be able to have access to a good tomato.

Nancy Matsumoto 49:07
I think that trying to, on the one hand, really advocate for democratic access to good food, but also really support the soil-based farmers who are doing really hard and important work and allow them to differentiate themselves. I think the transparency issue is key. Hydroponics should be very clearly labeled, and people can dig into it themselves and say, “Well, is it important for me?”

Nancy Matsumoto 49:38
I was at Climate Week in New York, and I went to a Food Tank seminar, workshop, or session that was very much based around the UN Food Program. The director was talking about how hydroponics in Kenya has been an incredible lifesaver, helping to lift people from starvation to being food secure.

Nancy Matsumoto 50:10
I don’t think that we should ignore it as a food solution, especially if it means the difference between starving and not starving, and giving someone a delicious tomato that way – or a pretty delicious tomato.

Nancy Matsumoto 50:26
I kind of grapple with all of this in the book, and I just say, “Ideally, we’d all live in a system where all of us could have soil-grown, really good things, and maybe one day, if everyone embraced the alternative food system, that would be possible.”

Nancy Matsumoto 50:44
But right now, because there is this kind of extreme wealth inequality in America, and there are people who really don’t have the means, the more democratic you can make better growing practices – maybe not perfect growing practices – the better. I want more people to not have to eat pesticides on their tomatoes.

Nancy Matsumoto 51:09
If hydroponics are going to help them get there, as long as they know what it is and know the trade-offs, I’m not against it existing. But I do think that soil-based farmers really need to have that – I talk a lot about it in the book – that value-added piece that allows you to decommoditize a product.

Nancy Matsumoto 51:30
You have to differentiate it. If you are just mixed with everything else, then you don’t have that differentiation, which is going to allow you to charge a little bit more for it and make people understand the true value of it. So it’s very complicated.

Linley Dixon 51:51
It’s so interesting to hear where you’ve landed on all these things. So many of the things that you figured out: lack of transparency, but also the consolidation in the industry, so that, if you’re a local soil farmer, you really don’t have the opportunity to put your heirloom tomato on the shelf, which actually is cheaper than the ones that are provided year round, and tastes like, you said, a whole lot better if it’s in season.

Linley Dixon 52:16
That’s always what I encourage is for eaters to actually buy their heirloom tomatoes in season from the farmers. But what has happened is they taste so horrible in the grocery store now because they’re actually not even really heirlooms. They’re hybrids that look like heirlooms, so automatically they don’t taste as good.

Linley Dixon 52:38
They’ve got thicker skin. They’re built for shipping. They’re picked green, and then by the time you get them… But what that’s done is it’s completely made the customer base think that heirloom tomatoes taste bad. So when the local farmers have them, not only do we not have the shelf space for them anymore, but people don’t know how good they can taste. So it’s a whole reeducation.

Linley Dixon 53:06
But I also was interested to kind of hear you talk about, in the Southern Hemisphere, these hydroponic facilities. I just want to say I’ve spent a lot of time in some of these countries, Kenya included, and the Pacific Islands, where a lot of outside money gets invested in these very high tech systems that no local farmer could ever afford to do on their own as, like, a gift, like, “Isn’t this cool?”

Linley Dixon 53:42
There’s a lot of vested interest in making it look like this is, like, a small, local thing that we’re doing. The tech, as soon as it breaks, I saw so many that were just abandoned, and it’s very input intensive, so you’re going to have to constantly buy fertilizers for the whole fertility of the crop.

Linley Dixon 54:05
If you think about all the high tech facilities to run a hydroponic feeding, the second those break down, the plants die. Whereas, if you’re growing in soil, you can compost and have… You really don’t have to buy anything.

Linley Dixon 54:18
I don’t know, I think some of them are just, like, projects that look like a benefit, and so they’re like fronts for the hydroponic industry. That’s sort of my take on it. I saw a lot of abandoned ones because [inaudible 54:38], and then they can’t sustain it.

Linley Dixon 54:39
But it’s also a power situation where people just don’t have the money to invest in it, and so inevitably, if there is one, it ends up being a power structure of who’s got the money to own it.

Nancy Matsumoto 54:52
It’s exactly what I saw in the cacao and the chocolate industries. It’s another form of colonialism where foreign government and big money come in, and it’s boom and bust. Then it goes down and they leave, and the farmers are left in the lurch.

Nancy Matsumoto 55:08
I guess, yeah, I would really want to know how much of it is benefiting the local community, and how many local farmers are actually involved. This is why it’s so complicated.

Linley Dixon 55:20
I know. I loved how many things we shared in common, though, when you were talking about the benefits. But some of what you said, I did see their talking points in there, like it saves water. They put these facilities in the deserts because there’s more sun there, and they’re totally draining aquifers trying to feed the world from the desert, and then they’re [inaudible 55:41] water savings.

Linley Dixon 55:42
When it comes to the energy and even the water, they’re just looking at the water in the production, not necessarily… They have these reverse osmosis systems to even provide the water, which you then have to rinse the filters, and that uses a ton of water.

Linley Dixon 56:01
It’s just like you said, the more you know, the more you really want to make that connection directly with your local producer. I think that’s kind of the conclusion that you came to. As much as possible, grow your own and support these regional food systems.

Linley Dixon 56:17
Are there any other closing thoughts that you want to end with here?

Nancy Matsumoto 56:21
No, I just hope that people read it and really feel empowered with a lot of knowledge and really have fun reading about these incredible women, because I love the people that I talk to. They’re all doing amazing work. They’re all really passionate about their land, about their animals, and about the regenerative work they’re doing.

Nancy Matsumoto 56:59
It’s incredibly hard, so they have to be driven by that sense of mission, that sense of community, and trying to build something from the ground up. I hope it empowers people to change their behaviors a little bit and to really look for these alternative food systems around them.

Linley Dixon 56:47
I appreciate it. Thank you so much for writing about this topic, and for bringing to the forefront so many issues that the organic project is working on…

Nancy Matsumoto 57:14
Thank you for the work you do. Thank you for this is a great interview. I enjoyed it.