THE STORY OF FOOD IS THE STORY OF ONE LONG TABLE.
In one direction are the generations that came before us. In the other are the generations that will come after us.
We sit in the middle, handing down the best food - and the best world we can.
Seeing that long table is taking the long view. It’s something we try to do in every action this business takes.
OUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON FOOD.
In small and large ways:
The kind of afternoon you have depends on the food you ate at breakfast.
Your long term health depends on the food you eat year round.
Just so, the kind of world we hand down to the next generations will depend on the kinds of food systems we invest in today. Food production is responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions globally. The way we eat now will directly impact the planet our children will inherit.
HEIRLOOM GRAINS
are not the modern industrial frankengrains that you, your parents, or even your grandparents likely grew up on. Heirloom grains are what your great-great-great-great grandparents lived on.
They've been carefully saved from harvested seed by generation after generation of farmer.
They taste better and are more nutrient dense.
Most people don’t even know what these grains taste like, because most grain farmers don’t grow them.
FARM TO TABLE
Most grain farmers sell to a middle-person, who sells to another middle-person.
Eventually it goes to a miller, who sells to a broker, who sells to a supplier, who sells to a contract manufacturer, who contracts with a brand to create a product.
With no transparency between the food on your table and the farm it came from, the farmer can’t afford to care about anything but yield per acre.
This is broken for so many reasons.
A farm-to-table supply chain gives farmers a reason to grow something better. Something tastier, something that isn’t ‘just wheat’.
BETTER SOIL, BETTER FOOD
Why are pasture-raised farm eggs so much better than factory eggs? Why do they have richer color, richer flavor, why do they cook differently in the pan? How do they make factory eggs look like a bad imitation of the real thing?
Soil health.
That healthy, pastured chicken is out there eating grubs and plants and all manner of little thing from the soil.
It’s the same with grains. Grains send out roots, asking the soil for what they need. And like any living thing it turns out that what they need is much, much more complex than three or four macronutients.
If all they get is an industrial imitation of soil, they will be an industrial imitation of real grains.
BETTER FARMS, BETTER FUTURE
Through practices like low-till farming, chemical reduction, cover cropping, crop rotation, crop diversity, and composting, regenerative agriculture
- captures carbon
-cleans water systems
-fosters biodiversity
-creates healthy topsoil
It doesn't just reduce the damage an industry does - it reverses damage done by a hundred and fifty years of short-sighted land mismanagement.
It's why we are active in the work of the Artisan Grain Collaborative, a midwest network farmers, millers, maltsters, bakers, chefs, brewers & researchers, working together to build a regenerative grainshed in the Upper Midwest.
