Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food 18 Liz Carlisle, how lentils changed a region and started an organic company 30 years ago
A group of farmers started one of the first organic companies in the US, 30 years ago on Montana.
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This time I had the great pleasure to interview Liz Carlisle, writer of the Lentil Underground, the amazing story about how five farmers created one of the first organic companies in the US.
We discussed how and why she went from country singer to writer! While singing for farmers she kept hearing the issues of farmers. Many farmers in the US work just as hard as before but can’t earn enough anymore to put food on the table. Which is ironic because they are supposed to be growing it. Liz came across this story of 5 farmers in Montana who set up Timeless Food, to market organic lentils (which they were using in their organic grain rotations). But no one was eating lentils or legumes at the time, let alone organic ones.
A few things which surprised Liz while writing the book:
- Many farmers have a global view
- Farmers are incredible scientists
- They operate on very complex 10 year rotations between grains, livestock, legumes etc.
- It takes a long time to build a solid foundation for a values based company, but when that is done you can grow faster.
We discussed why Timeless Seeds started 30 years ago:
- There was a cycle of crisis in the commodity agriculture business
- Input costs were so high to force people to look for ways to reduce inputs (they started using legume cover crops to insert nitrogen into the soil)
- Grain prices were so low, people were looking for outside the commodity system.This provided the perfect storm for a new company focussed on selling the cover crop and some extra income to the farmers.
Liz's advice for impact investors who want to get into the regenerative agriculture space: Place based, really getting to know the local place! Regenerative agriculture is all about fitting the agricultural system to the place rather than having this one standard one opposed all over the world. Get to know the place/ecosystem really well and find the missing piece of the puzzle for a regenerative agriculture system. As an impact investor you can help to accelerate that transition which needs to come by creating those markets.
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