Why “No Farms, No Food” is a Biophilic Rallying Cry

Jennifer (0s): Hey Monica. 

Monica (1s): Hey Jennifer. 

Jennifer (3s): Tell us about our guest today. 

Monica (6s): Today we’re talking with Beth Sauerhaft who's the Vice President of Programs at American Farmland Trust. If you've seen the “No Farms, No Food” bumper stickers out in the world, then you might be familiar with them. AFT is a national leader in farmland protection and conservation, and they also work with farmers and landowners to promote regenerative practices that we've already talked about on this podcast to keep healthy soil. 

Jennifer (26s): And as the VP of programs, Beth has a huge role in carrying out that mission. Before joining American Farmland Trust, Beth held roles with the department of agriculture and the EPA working on land conservation and agriculture policy. She was also the senior director of corporate sustainability at PepsiCo for eight years. So it was really interesting to get her perspective on corporate sustainability, as someone with a background in the policy corporate, and now non-profit worlds. 

Monica (52s): American Farmland Trust does some amazing work and really is the leader in conservation. Beth has an absolute wealth of information about their mission and program. So without further ado, let's dive into the interview. Hey Beth, thank you so much for being with us today on Biophilic Solutions. How are you? 

Beth (1m 10s): I'm doing great. Monica. Thanks very much. I'm excited to be here talking to you guys. 

Monica (1m 15s): Hey Jennifer, how are you? 

Jennifer (1m 17s): Hi, good morning. I'm so happy to see Beth and hear your voice and finally meet you, even if it is on Zoom. I've heard so much about you and I know so much about your work. So I'm so thankful that you've taken the time out of your crazy schedule to just sit with us and talk about everything you're doing. 

Monica (1m 33s): Yeah. American Farmland Trust has been a good friend of ours, Serenbe for a number of years. And we are thrilled. You're here for those of you uninitiated, if you ever hear about No Farms, No Food, that is their tagline. And it is something that is super important, really sort of the, the leader in not only land conservation, but really thinking about agricultural and farm conservation. So Beth, welcome again. 

I really want to start and dig in with the work you're doing. You run all programs for American Farmland Trust, but for sort of the uninitiated, tell us a little bit about the history and goals of the company or the foundation, I should say. 

Beth (2m 19s): Sure, thanks very much. So AFT was founded 40 years ago and our mission is to save the land that sustains us by protecting farmland, promoting sound farming practices and keeping farmers on the land. And so we were the original agricultural land trust. We helped many of many other land trusts and state farmland protection programs get started. Peggy Rockefeller, it was sort of her brain child and her baby. 

And so here we are 40 years later and, and our mission is very much focused on those three things of farmland protection and six and a half million acres of farmland have been protected to date by AFT other land trusts that we helped to create public state and federal programs. We're also focused on promoting sound farming practices. And so, you know, having widespread use of advanced farming practices that build healthy soil and increase our resilience and combat, climate change are really critical. 

I mean, and no more critical than they are today. And, and our third leg of our mission is about keeping farmers on the land were expecting about a 40%, 40% of our agricultural land to be transitioning in the next 15 years, giving the aging demographic of our farmers and ranchers. So we, we need to be sure that we've got this next generation to work the land and to grow the food and fiber and fuel that we all depend on in a successfully successful and sustainable way. 

Monica (4m 0s): Well, and when you say 40% of the land is transitioning, it feels like that's a little bit of marketing speak, you know, no offense to you. Like we all do it in a pleasant way of like we're losing that farm land, right. Because farmers are aging out, right? So then there aren't younger farmers coming on, this is the land. And so that the land is changing hands. Is that sort of what that means? Cause it, I really love to kind of educate our listeners like what's really happening here. 

Beth (4m 31s): No, that's a great question. So there's, there's a couple of things going on. So one is farmland, lost farmland is being converted for high density, urban development, as well as less low density, residential, you know, a lot of formats, people who want these five and 10 acre pieces of land, which you know, is, is idyllic, but it really breaks up the bigger chunks of land that we need to farm. So we are losing approximately 2000 acres of farmland a day to conversion. 

And that's, that's really, you know, it's, it's, it's tragic, it's, it's a huge amount of land and it's, if we don't stem that flow, you know, there's a lot of concern. So that's, that's one piece of the issue. The other piece is that with so many farmers, you know, approaching retirement age, which may or may not be age 65, whatever it age it is they want to retire, you know, ideally a new, somewhat younger farmer would step into their place. 

But purchasing farmland is not cheap. Accessing capital is not easy. Many people who may want to go into farming may have not even grown up on a farm or a ranch. So in fact, before I came to AFT, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. And I, I briefly entertained there, there's an apple orchard, just a little north of me, that's for sale. And I thought, oh, maybe I'll buy this apple orchard. 

I went to it, you know, for the last, I don't know, on and off for the last 40 or 50 years. And wouldn't that be fun? And then, you know, you start thinking about it and you see the price and it, again, it's, it's, you know, how do you access the capital to buy the land? And then those guys wanted to retire. So how am I going to learn about growing apples? And so just even that sort of technical knowledge, and then the financial knowledge, the management, all of that, there's, there's a, a huge learning slope. 

And so part of what we focus on is training new and beginning farmers and ranchers, but also training, we call them navigators or Ag professionals who can help train those people who want to go into farming and ranching. And, and then we've also developed some programs where it's, it's sort of like a matchmaking, you know, programs. And we've got a really robust one in the Hudson Valley here, which is all about matching farmers who are looking to retire with those who are looking to access farmland. 

But, you know, again, it's, it's, it's, it's hard work and there's so many variables that, you know, that's, that's why we're really concerned about it. And that's why it's a major focus of what we do 

Jennifer (7m 39s): Are those farmland programs relatively new to partner up and coming farmers with established farmers. 

Beth (7m 46s): I think they are, I don't actually know how long they've all been around, but yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a wonderful idea. But then again, the other challenge is, I didn't know about those programs when I was looking at that apple orchard, you know, and so part of our challenge is also getting the message about these programs out to the public. Yeah. 

Monica (8m 11s): Yeah. I know conservation trust here is talking about doing one or has a program, but you're right. There is probably a lack of awareness that they exist. And I know in Chattahoochee Hills where Serenbe is located, we are working with you guys and the Rodale Institute and the conservation fund to sort of figure out, you know, what does that look like? Who owns it? How do we create awareness around it? Obviously we would bring in Georgia organics and Georgia Grown. So I think that farmland program to me is kind of a really cool thing. 

And if there was a national one or at least a national aggregator, right. Cause if I wanted to move to the Hudson valley, I maybe, I don't know, you know, how do I go find the Hudson Valley one? How do I find the Chat Hills one or California? That would be interesting. So your farm link program is something that's pushing that. 

Beth (9m 3s): Yeah. And, and there are many states have FarmLink programs or there are many FarmLink programs throughout the states, but right. They're all stewarded in different ways and to varying degrees and it it's something, you know, we've talked about is bringing, having some sort of a national aggregating kind of a platform. 

Monica (9m 25s): Yeah, well, we'll, we'll link to yours to start the awareness for that. Yeah. Your, you know, I think it is interesting cause I think land and as, you know, working for a developer, right. And so, you know, one of the things that Serenbe's done, you know, developers have, have tendency to have sort of the big, bad developer negative, you know, coming in and plowing everything down. And so Steve Nygren is really trying to sort of change that model. You know, it's still not perfect, but part of it is like houses are going to be built, right. 

So how do we do it in a more thoughtful way to save the farm land? So the model that we've really worked on is like TDRs or transfer development rights, you know, so 70%, oh, you know, there's a zoning overlay, sorry, that sort of says 70% will be saved of the land. And we'll only build on the 30, but there's also this transfer development rights, which I know you guys work on a bit of like how do, how do land owners transfer the land that they own? They can build their house on it, or even say their mini farmette, but like transfer the majority of that land into a conservation easement that would be for agriculture. 

But I think the point I want to make is like, there are tools in the toolkit for land owners and developers to be partners with conservationists, which I think is super important that we're all thinking that we're in this together and it's not an either or sometimes like how do we conserve land together and bringing everybody to the table I think is super important. 

Beth (11m 4s): Well, well, and also you think about just even the cost of infrastructure, right? So when, when you're divvying up farmland into these little farmettes, there are huge infrastructure costs, you know, you've got to get all of your utilities out there. Whereas if we focus much more on concentrated smart growth and protecting the ag land for agriculture, it's, it's also, it's less expensive for everybody, both in immediate costs, as well as the opportunity costs of the, the unquantified costs to the environment. 

And then the greenhouse gas emissions that are associated with just the transportation. Right? Yeah. 

Jennifer (11m 48s): Well, I'm glad you're bringing that part up even because here I am based in New York City and like, I'm like Monica, I'm not in this every day because I live in New York City. So, but I know so many people that are leaving the city to explore opportunities, to move to larger properties and the possibility of being a part of a farm or a farm community. So just this knowledge and listening to you helps me understand better what to look for or what I can also share with friends of mine that are, are building, are looking to explore opportunities elsewhere outside of a high dense region. So it's really important. 

Beth (12m 24s): Yeah and I think it's also important to think about, well, what are people really looking for? Like, is it, do I just want fresh food, fresh local foods. So then, so then maybe become part of, buy into a CSA or maybe participate more in agritourism, you know, again, unless you really are that person who has what it takes to move on, you know, to buy this farm land or ranch land and, and to manage it successfully for the long term. 

Yeah. I mean, it's definitely been a stressor that right. There's, there's articles in the New York Times. And I think the Washington Post and other papers all the time, especially in the last year and a half of folks moving out of urban areas and I've got many friends who are, have done just that. 

Monica (15m 06s): Yeah, yeah exactly. And then a year later they're like, oops, I have all the plants. What do I do? I just wanted to be close. I wanted to CSA or be part. So, so I think, you know, really being thoughtful about that and again, thinking about the different tools in the toolkit, one of the things that, you know, Jennifer and I are just really following is like, you know, the world economic forum is really listing biodiversity loss as one of the top five global risks that is likely to happen. And I know that AFT is really tackling biodiversity in wildlife habitats on agricultural and forest land. 

And that's another thing that I think sometimes we don't think about is that when we're taking away this land or quote unquote, it's, you know, it's being transitioned, you know, it's not just that the land's going away. It’s that, you know, no farms, no food, but also the biodiversity changes. Can you talk a little bit about that and how agriculture relates to that biodiversity? 

Beth (16m 04s): Yeah. And, and this is, this is something that's actually on my mind personally, quite a bit, because you know, I'm in this suburban town where we have black bears coming into town and there's more and more coyotes. And this, the more that people push out development, the more that urban people are interacting with wildlife with, with predators, many of whom don't really want to be, aren't really a danger to us, but where you don't know anything about them. 

And so we're scared of them. And, and the reason that's happening is because we're infringing upon their habitat by this outward spread from these urban centers. So farm and ranch land is really critical to wildlife habitat. And mostly because many wildlife species really rely on private lands for their habitat for foraging. So we've embarked on this really unique effort to map the agricultural and forest lands across the contiguous United States. 

Those, those areas that help wildlife move daily and seasonally within their home ranges, you know, we call them corridors. And so many of these patches on the working landscape provide habitat and food. They facilitate the dispersal and genetic interchange between populations and therefore they really helped to protect biodiversity. And so if we can maintain suitable habitat across a variety of these land ownership types and land uses and spatial scales, they're all critical to halting this accelerated loss of biodiversity that we're seeing from habitat loss and climate change. 

And so ag lands really have a key role in this, in our, our farms under threat initiative is, is our research program is really focusing on this a lot. They're collecting data sets that will help us identify key wildlife habitat that's associated with ag lands. And then, and then another important piece of this is many of the, many people tend to think of, oh, corn and soybeans, you know, they think of monocultures or, or what do we even call, you know, two cropping systems, a duo-culture? A lot of the work that we're doing, we are encouraging farmers to adopt cover crops. 

You know, so this is it not only has the benefit of covering the soil in between these other cropping cycles so that we are reducing soil loss, we're reducing impact negative impacts to water quality, but they also help to A, improve the soil, the diversity of soil microorganisms, which is critical. Many of us just think of big mega flora and fauna, but the microorganisms in the soil are really critical and a diversity of those as critical to soil health and productivity, but there's other, and oftentimes when we're recommending these cover crops, it may just be one crop like rye, or it could be a mix of cover crops. 

So that too is adding more diversity to the, to the land base. But then there's other practices that farmers can do that we encourage like riparian buffers or doing plant planting for pollinator habitat for native grass seedings or Prairie strips or pasture and grazing land management. And, you know, each of those are focusing on both plants and animal diversity. And I would say, you know, from down to the micro organisms, in the soil to the species in our river to the, you know, to what's on our land base, 

Jennifer (20m 9s): Is all that information on your website for us to kind of dive into then as well?

Beth (20m 14s): Yes, it is. 

Monica (20m 16s): There's a, there's a blog that I read that sort of talks about how, like it's not just one thing, right? It's a whole system that needs to be put into place. And so again, back to that knowledge base and educating current farmers and future farmers, as well as we had um Jeff Katch from Rodale on that talked about regenerative farming and how important the soil health is. And so I think, you know, that's just one of those other things that like, how do we get people starting to understand? It's like, not only do we have to save the land, but then we have to treat it appropriately. 

One of the things that I think is interesting is you came from Pepsi-Co and when you hear Pepsi-Co and then you hear saving farmland, you know, the general public might not put that together, but tell us how you got there because you were doing sustainability work there. And I'm super curious to figure out like, okay, what were you doing with them? And then what made you decide to come over to American Farmland Trust from a large, you know, packaged goods company? 

Beth (21m 19s): Great question. And one that I get quite a bit

Jennifer (21m 21s): I'm sure you do. 

Beth (21m 27s): So when I was at PepsiCo, I was always doing sustainability work. Initially it was focused on North America and just the beverage part of the company. But then in the last half of the, I don't know, the last four or five years I was there, it was focused internationally. And a lot of it was really focused on the agricultural supply chain. And I, I developed a, it was called a sustainable farming initiative and it was a sustainability program that focused on environmental, social and economic sustainability of the agricultural supply chain. 

And then I developed another program for, that focused on dairy. And, and I also did things like incorporate push to incorporate sustainability thinking into the whole R and D process, like the product innovation process. So if you ask the right questions from the beginning, there's less to clean up at the end. So that's like, where are you sourcing from? What are the, what are the raw materials and crops you're sourcing? You know, what's the nutritional value, but also environmental impact? 

What are the human rights impacts or social impacts? You know, the labor that's producing that those raw materials is, is it done in a way that is economically sustainable for the farmer and farm community? Because if they're not able to, you know, make a living from it, then that product is not going to that raw material is not going to be there for the long term. And also it's, it's probably not going to be produced in the way that one wants. And then also introduce sustainability into the annual and more longer-term strategic planning processes. 

Again, all, all with the intention of asking questions upfront about the raw material, sourcing, the manufacturing, even the retail and the consumption and end of life aspect of things. And to me, yeah, it's hard work. It's, there's, there's not always wins every day. You know, it can often feel like two steps forward, one step back or two steps back one step forward. But when you're working for a, what was it, $70 billion company, and you make one incremental change, that has huge implications, you know, what is it, a company that sells in more countries than there are members of the United Nations sources raw  materials from, I don't know, over 70 or 80 countries, at least the impact, the potential for impact is tremendous. I, I left PepsiCo. I mean, quite frankly it was, they were doing some restructuring and, and, and I left and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and the sustainability stuff is really part of my DNA. It's who I am, no matter how much I try to think about well should I do something else, time to shift. 

I always come back to these things and I just really care so much about the environment. I'm really concerned about climate change. I'm concerned about the quality of the planet that my son is inheriting and American Farmland Trust was an organization that I had heard about when I used to work at the department of agriculture with NRCS. And I thought very highly of then a very close friend of mine and former colleague when I was at AFT, had been the president of AFT a couple of presidents ago. 

And I saw that they had a job opening and I reached out to John Piatti and the rest is history. And I haven't looked back at all. I mean, it's a wonderful organization with a fabulous mission. The people who work here are so passionate, so committed about the mission and what they do and have deep and broad expertise. And, and then you learn just personal things about them. And they've all got really interesting lives and are just, you know, a complex integrated whole. 

So it's great. 

Monica (25m 34s): I wasn't sure if you had a question Jennifer, 

Jennifer (25m 36s): I did actually, because there's so much, I want to touch on with that, but you know, someone that comes from the corporate world. What do you think are the major challenges that corporations come up against and may attempt to kind of move more towards a sustainable business model? 

Beth (25m 52s): Quite often, you know, certainly a publicly traded company has a duty, a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. And when you hear, you know, shareholders are trading on the fraction of a second to just make, to make a profit, it becomes a little more challenging for a CEO to think long term. And at the time when I was at PepsiCo, the company CEO, Andrew, we had a long-term vision and sustainability was really important to her, but nonetheless, you've got a lot of short-term thinking procurement officers are sometimes hired to take money out of the equation. 

And so when you want to work with farmers in your supply chain about adopting new practices that have an upfront cost, even if a long term financial benefit, the person's gotta be creative and innovative and willing to think about how can I structure that contract? Is it always, it may not always be giving a higher price, but maybe it's having some pricing tied to petroleum since, you know, a lot of costs of production are tied to petroleum. It could be having a longer term contract. 

So that I've, if I'm a farmer, I've got more security knowing that, okay, you want me to adopt, you know, say, start using cover crops or no till agriculture. And there's an upfront cost to me, but at least I know that I've got a longer term contract with you. So there's, you're when a company shows that they are taking on some of the risks that they want their suppliers to take on, I think that tends to be more successful. And then also, you know, we think of some of these big packaged good companies, hundreds of thousands of employees, they're huge. 

They've got boatloads of money. They can do whatever they want to do. Many of them don't have enough staff and they don't have staff with the expertise to work one-on-one with their agricultural supply chains to talk about and train them on these new practices. And so where would you go to next? Usually you think about extension systems, well, extension systems in the US and around the rest of the world are really not as prevalent or robust or well-funded as they used to be, or need to be the partner that corporations would sort of naturally look to them to be. 

So it's, it's really challenging. And I guess the final thing is going back to that sort of short-term thinking is many of these practices we're talking about, like to improve soil health, it can take years until you see a measurable benefit. And so again, you gotta be in it for the long haul, and this can be challenging, but we are seeing more, more and more CEOs who are doing that. They're saying, I am not gonna cater as much to the quarterly report we're in this for the long run. 

Monica (28m 54s): Yeah. I think that, that's an interesting thing to think about as we're seeing, you know, companies reporting out ESGs right their, their sustainability goals, I think, is a good first step, but I think it will be interesting as more CEOs where it's going to, and boards are going to be driving them to report out carbon, you know, data and metrics as well in a more, what, what, you know, kind of what we think about in regenerative agriculture, a more regenerative way to look at it, where, how are people treated? 

How are we treating the environment? How are we treating, you know, the, the biodiversity and if those data points beyond the ESGs, because I think the ESGs are, can be superficial. You know, if we can get those everybody's sort of on board with reporting, then that becomes what you're reporting to the street, to the shareholders. Right. And now maybe, you know, we can get out of that short term ism a little bit, or at least we're putting metrics and values on these things that we hadn't in the past. 

And so I, it's an interesting where the world's going and I feel like things have sped up, but do you think that, that, you know, we need the PepsiCo's to participate and give everybody a little bit of, you know, no time and knowledge that it does go up and down and in and out, and we're not always perfect. Do you think, do you think we're getting there to agree in our future? I mean, I know now you get to push on a different side. Are, are you guys able to consult with some of the corporations or, 

Beth (30m 41s): Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm an eternal optimist. My glass is always half full. And I think, I think there is progress, it's, you know, not, not as fast as many people would want. And, and I guess I would just even segue a second to say there are so many things that before going to PepsiCo, I always thought, you know, I would sort of hypothetically ask questions about the packaging, or I would ask about, well, why, why does a Pepsi need to be so sweet? 

Why can't you just take a teaspoon out of it every year and make it less sweet or whatever, you know? And then you realize when you get into the chemistry of these things, there is a reason for every, every ingredient, and, and it's not just flavor. A lot of it has to do with, you know, other aspects, shelf, or even mouth feel or, or whatever it may be, or, you know, Pepsi, PepsiCo tried to do the biodegradable packaging and people, people complained about the noise it made, you know, I'm in a movie theater eating and my son chips or whatever, and it, it was just too crinkly and people don't like that. So there's, there's that challenge that companies are trying to, I think many companies are trying to move in the right direction, but consumers, I think sometimes we're fickle. Like we want something, but we want it now. And we want it to work and be perfect right away. And I think there needs to be patience all around for making mistakes. 

You know, let's, let's sort of assume positive intent unless we're really given a reason not to and understand that there are going to be mistakes, different sectors need to learn how to talk, speak the same language and talk to one another consumers need to realize that it can take many tries until a company gets something right. But hey, you know, there's a responsibility on us that consumer to properly dispose of that packaging. You don't just get to throw it out the window. 

So it's, I think it's moving in the right direction. I think in a vacuum of the, the political vacuum of the last previous four years, we saw a lot of companies stepping in to make progress in fighting against climate change. And I think we're going to only see that continue. 

Jennifer (33m 10s): It's such a good point too, like that symbiotic kind of relationship of how we feel about first of all the land and how we want corporations to do something fast and better and quicker, and yet people aren't really learning how our purchases really pay a price to the planet and how we can kind of make those changes. That's such a good point of consumerism really saying, I want it now, instead of saying, okay, we need to learn how to do things better and to be better equipped and understand how that affects affects the earth and the planet and the soil really. 

Monica (33m 43s): Yeah, that's amazing. Tell us about, you know, what is a program that you're working on? I know one which I'm interested in is, is female farmers, getting more women into farming. And, and I don't know if you want to touch on that, or is there another program that you feel like, you know, we should know about and really consider supporting? 

Beth (32m 15s): Yeah, I can talk about that one. I would love to talk about climate change as well, but so our Women for the Land initiative is a, a really neat initiative in that many landowners are women. And, you know, if you think of that, many of them out live their, their husbands and so they, or they may inherit land, or they, you know, they either, they're either left with it when their husbands die or they are inherited or they buy it. 

But many of them are not actually operating that land. And so our Women for the Land initiative is about developing these peer-to-peer learning networks where women can learn about who are the ag service providers that they can talk to. You know, who, who is the extension officer, who is the salt and water conservation district person, or that natural resource conservation service person who can help them with, they have any questions about farming, their land. 

Why, what many of them may be conservation oriented and might say, hey, to the farmer who's renting their land. How about growing cover crops? But if you don't understand some of the risks that is involved in growing a cover crop on rented land, then you can't share the risk. So we train them about, you know, think about the contract. What is the term of that contract? If a farmer's going to grow cover crops to improve the soil so that they have more productive, get more productivity from it. 

And you have, the landowner has healthier soils. It takes years. So maybe you should lengthen the contract. Maybe you help to go in on the price of the cover crop seeds. So you're sharing the risk. And then increasingly the initiative is going beyond just building these networks to train women on regenerative practices, but also to think about the land access and transfer, you know, succession planning, those sorts of issues, and also working to, you know, I think women have traditionally had less access or taken advantage less of farm bill programs because the men are seen as the farmer. 

Maybe they haven't and women have often been the off-farm job that provides insurance benefits. So it's, it can be training women on what these programs are, and it can also be going beyond and, and looking more at who are the historically underserved farmers and landowners and helping to build these peer to peer networks with that population as well. 

Monica (36m 58s): Yeah. I know Georgia organics is doing a lot of really great work around getting, you know, black, brown and indigenous farmers back onto the land and getting them to be able to purchase it because I think that's a huge part of it, right. It's not about just leasing somebody's land or it's really figuring out how do you get a program to, so the farmers can actually own the land again and really to your point have that ownership. 

Beth (37m 22s): Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And I mean, I don't know how much time we have, but one of the, another thing that we have an initiative on combating climate change, and that's, that's one that's relevant across all three legs of our mission. And so, you know, to combat climate change and keep planetary warming well below that two degree centigrade, that's outlined by the intergovernmental panel on climate change and to meet the goals of the palate, Paris agreement, conserving farmland, increasing the amount of carbon sequestered, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, these are all essential to mitigating climate change and increasing climate resilience. So we are encouraging again, the widespread adoption of regenerative farming practices. We need sufficient farmland and we need enough farmers and ranchers who are trained in everything that they need to know to succeed in farming for the long term. And so we're working across each of these through work done in our regional offices, as well as through my team of national initiative directors and their staff. 

So we quantify the impacts of regenerative practices on soil health, climate benefits, and farm operation economics through on-farm research and modeling. We work by uniting coalitions and influencing policy, bringing together a farm and conservation interest to advance policies that will enable agriculture to be a central climate solution. And we work on the ground at the local and regional level by partnering directly with farmers and ranchers and landowners and other professionals who support them to try to increase the adoption of regenerative ag practices across the country. 

Monica (39m 14s): Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I think that, that's another thing that, that people, we sort of miss, we think about this two degrees and it's so just, just this weird number, it seems like a small number. So maybe it's not that big of a deal, but it is obviously, and we're seeing the effects of it, but you're right. The land and the soil and the farming can be a huge part of the solution. I know we were just talking about Georgia Drawdown, which I know regenerative agriculture is one of their top, you know, hundred draw downs. 

How can people get involved, Beth? Like what can we do to help? 

Beth (39m 56s): Well, there's a number of things. So first of all, we welcome donations. You know, they're critical to helping us do our work, or someone could go online and request a “No Farms, No Food” bumper sticker and help spread our message. You know, our farms are really providing an unparalleled abundance of fresh, healthy, and local food, but they're rather rapidly disappearing and they need to be protected and people need be aware of this message or vote in support of your favorite farmer's market. 

This summer, by voting in our farmer's market celebration and help help them earn the $2,500 top prize national recognition and other things, and our voting for that closes on September 19th. 

Monica (40m 45s): Ok perfect, well we’ll put a note, or, put a link in our show notes. Perfect. 

Speaker 2 (38m 59s): Because probably all of us buy from farmer's markets or we know of a nearby one. That's great for any one of the listeners who are involved in ag, land protection, join our national ag land, great networking and learning opportunity. Look online, attend one of our events. If there's someone who's interested in joining our team, keep an eye on our career page, career page apply for open positions. You will never find a more committed and passionate group of people who have amazing expertise in their fields. 

And finally, I would just return to the first comment I made. We welcome all donations regardless of size. 

Monica (41m 28s): It's hugely important 

Jennifer (41m 31s): Your work is important, really it's really important. 

Beth (41m 35s): Yeah, no. And we, you know, we appreciate the partnership with you guys. 

Monica (39m 51s): We're, we are huge fans and we understand the importance. And I think, again, you know, what we want to do is sort of, you know, raise awareness that this is all part of biophilia. Like without the land, we won't have us, right? Cause no food, no farms, no, no healthy food, no people, as well as just excited to have you part of the movement and really you’re spreading the word for the planet. And then again, I'm just super excited to have you as a partner and be part of the Biophilic Institute. So we so appreciate your time today. 

Jennifer (42m 20s): Thank you so much, Beth, for sharing all your wisdom with us today. 

Beth (42m 23s): Thank you very much for the opportunity. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks. 

Monica (42m 33s): Okay. Tell me about your thoughts in that conversation with that. 

Jennifer (42m 36s): Okay. She is so interesting and that was so interesting. I think when people think about conservation and protecting land, they don't necessarily think about agricultural land and how important it is to protect spaces where our food is produced. 

Monica (42m 49s): Yeah. And then not only protecting that land, but also protecting the farmers and giving them the tools, the education they need for success in creating healthy farms that produce healthy food, which we all know is the future, which is regenerative agriculture. 

Jennifer (43m 4s): I love that perspective too. And how developers and conservationists don't have to be at odds with each other. There are tools for development that take wildlife and farmland preservation into consideration. But if everyone starts demonizing each other and assuming bad faith, nothing changes because no one is talking to each other. 

Monica (43m 21s): Exactly. And it's kind of the same with corporate responsibility, right? And I thought that portion of the interview is really fascinating where, you know, traditional corporate motivations tend to be short-term and profit driven. They're really working towards the street, the financial street, that's really anti ethical to how we measure sustainability initiatives, which tend to have longer term outcomes. I'm happy to hear that she's optimistic that more and more CEOs are recognizing that we're going to have to use different metrics to measure success in all of these areas. 

Jennifer (43m 51s): And that we, as consumers, need to understand that our customer experience might be affected in some ways by that and be open to it. 

Monica (44m): Yeah. I was fascinated by the SunChips example, you know, we really get in our own way. So what are some of your key takeaways? 

Jennifer (44m 7s): So definitely that protecting agriculture land, protecting farmers and fostering regenerative farming practices are all essential to combating climate change and essential in our fight for a healthy planet and healthy people and a biophilic world. So we need to support American farmland trust. 

Monica (44m 22s): Exactly. So go to their website, request your free, No Farms, No Food bumper sticker, donate, support your local farmer or farmer's market. We've got all the links in our show notes to help you get started. And thanks again for joining us on the biophilic movement.