Скачать или смотреть Think Regeneration: Kudos to the Illinois Cover Cropper

All I see is opportunity.

I’m just getting settled back in the Midwest, and here are a few observations:

Food deserts are everywhere, and very common around our nation’s best soil. I met with a few farmers yesterday in Benson, Illinois, to begin tackling this problem. Benson, as it turns out, is a food desert too, although sixth-generation family farmers there have bought the old grocery store and plan to bring it back to life this year.

In my region in western Illinois, I would guess 2-3% of the fields have a live cover crop and 20-30% have residue left in them. The rest are tilled and bare, showing some of the blackest soil I’ve ever seen. Coming from the red-brown clays of Colorado, it’s a real contrast. Again, huge opportunities, but we still need to work on explaining the “why” in a more effective way to farmers with abundant water and rich, black soil.

The largest grocery store chain in the region still relegates organics to a “healthy food” section in the back corner of the store. A manager told me “they just don’t sell”. Conversely, a co-op in the region focused on Brix and nutrient density told me they can’t keep up with the demand and will double revenue in three years. Both can be true as it turns out. The food supply is complex, and asking consumers to pay more is a challenge when the big grocers they trust aren’t doing any education, and playing the relegation game.

A request: I am talking to a local grocery store in Wisconsin today who is interested in tackling part of the problem and creating a test educational hub for consumer education. If you have something in your community that is working, or would like to help with Think Regeneration’s Consumer Education project with funding or other support, please let me know.

Time to get back to work …

#change #people #mindset #leaders #regenerativeagriculture #foodsupply #humanhealth #thinkregeneration