Transcript
0:00:01 Intro Speaker: Welcome to Fresh Takes on Tech, the podcast exploring what’s next in food and agriculture through the lens of innovation and technology. Hosted by Vonnie Estes, each episode features conversations with people driving change in the produce industry. From entrepreneurs to scientists to industry leaders and policymakers. This isn’t about hype, it’s about real conversations with people who are making a difference.
0:00:24 Intro Speaker: Let’s get into it.
0:00:25 Vonnie Estes: Hello and welcome to Fresh Takes on Tech. Today we’re going to launch our season on regenerative agriculture, which is a topic that’s super important and we’re hearing a lot about in the news right now in our industry and others. And we are welcoming back to the show Tamara, who’s the VP of Sustainability at IFPA, to kick off this season and talk about some of the work that we’re doing and what’s happening in Regen overall. Thanks for coming back to the show, Tamara.
0:00:52 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Thank you so much, Vonnie, for this opportunity to join this great podcast and to always to have a conversation with you.
0:01:00 Vonnie Estes: So let’s set a little context on what’s going on with IFPA and the USDA and kind of Regen in general. Just kind of tell us since the last time we talked, which has been a while, like, what’s happened?
0:01:12 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Great question. So what is IFPA? International Fresh Produce Association. We represent the entire supply chain of the fruit, vegetable and flower industry around the world. What’s happening with the USDA is that we had a program with the USDA that started a couple of years ago that was focused on Climate Smart Agriculture. We were recipients of the grant and administrators of the grant. With the change of the administration, some of the philosophies around the program changed and that change needed to be adapted.
0:01:50 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And now it’s we IFPA is focusing it more on Region Ag. But to answer your question, what’s going on with Region Ag? Where are we focusing it more on Region Ag? Why was it Our choice is because the region ag conversation around the world has exploded, especially since 2023, when the largest retailers and consumer good companies around the world declared themselves regenerative or put regenerative at the forefront of their strategies.
0:02:27 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And we knew that that was going to impact our industry and we needed to be ready for it. What we did, what we did as an association was get our act together because it was very confusing. There were a lot of definitions and we knew that we needed to define the terms of Regen Ag for ourselves, something that would be meaningful for us but also help us in that journey. And then once we had a definition, thanks to a great working group and a great council that has been working on it.
0:03:04 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Once we had that background when the administration changed that Climate Smart grant into oh, do something different that is focused on conservation and involving markets. Because we had that great footing and that great background, we were able to adapt to that change. And now our portion of the grant is called very cleverly, Regen Ag.
0:03:32 Vonnie Estes: Great. And so you’ve picked that back up again and are at a point where we’re starting to look at how we’re going to work with the industry and how we’re going to promote Regen Ag. So talk a little bit about the grant and what it’s called now and kind of what’s happening with that.
0:03:50 Tamara Muruetagoiena: The official name from the USDA is Advancing Markets for Producers. So what the USDA is trying to put together is they want to advance conservation practices and they want growers that are advancing those practices to be connected to the market and to be able to benefit from the market. Greatest interest, increasing interest in sustainable practices, conservation practices, regenerative practices. The names vary but they’re basically the same.
0:04:24 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So that’s what they’re aiming for, is putting those two together.
0:04:28 Vonnie Estes: So what’s the talk a little bit about the kind of logistics and the pieces of the grant and the point that we’re at right now, IFPA is
0:04:36 Tamara Muruetagoiena: the administrator of a portion of the grant. In our grants we are looking to have 100 growers. They pick from a series of regenerative practices, simple practices like nutrition management, water management, low till rotations, soil amendments, etc. Classic practices in conservation or region ag. So we pick 100 growers. We recruit 100 growers. Thus far we have recruited over 70. So we’re well on our way. We still are on the recruiting, recruitment process.
0:05:15 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Hello, any growers there? Come to us, we’ll talk more about that. And so the goal is to pick a practice and then we do soil samples on the land based on that practices and that practice to see what changes have there been on the soil throughout time. A soil sample in the beginning and at the end. So we can see some indicators of classically known of soil health, carbon in the soil and other attributes, other attributes of soil health to see how those practices have improved soil health. Ideally. Right.
0:05:58 Tamara Muruetagoiena: We’re also taking yield as you know, so important to see how these practices are impacting yield because in the end we want to know if yield increases, decreases, it maintains itself because all these practices are an add on. There are actually something a little different than was done Before.
0:06:19 Vonnie Estes: So what’s the period of time? So you said like at the beginning and the end, what’s the period of time?
0:06:24 Tamara Muruetagoiena: That is the more tricky thing. We’re dealing with nature and agriculture and then you put on top an administrate, an administration over it. And that is not always perfect. Right. But we’re measuring four years of these practices on in the field.
0:06:43 Vonnie Estes: So the point would be to offset some of the risk for the growers. Right. To give them money to be able to offset. Because that’s one of the biggest issues about adoption is that why should a grow. Why does the grower always have to take the risk on for trying something new that should be more sustainable? So that’s. So they’ll get paid to do these different practices and then for the soil samples and everything that’ll get paid for. Is that kind of how it’s set up?
0:07:10 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Oh, exactly. That is the key point. Thank you for saying it. The key point is that the growers get very well compensated for these practices. In fact, this new administration has focused on that perhaps fewer requirements in terms of what data is gathered from the growers and more focus on supporting the growers on this process. Because all of these practices, as we all know, are an investment. And we need to compensate the growers for experimenting with these practices because there are for the most part novel practices. Some of them are more tried and true, but not used in that particular field before.
0:07:48 Vonnie Estes: So growers have seen a lot of sustainability and regenerative programs come and go. What makes AMP is the acronym we use. What makes AMP different and why should this one feel credible and worth their time?
0:08:01 Tamara Muruetagoiena: What’s really interesting about our industry is that growers are incredibly curious. You lead Innovation Technology. You know, the curiosity in our industry is immense and the growers are there always trying to innovate with practices, et cetera. So they’ve been curious for a while for many different reasons to advance this kind of practices. The reasons behind, sometimes it’s sustainability, sometimes it’s just to have a better soil, sometimes it’s to manage water better, sometimes it’s to reduce fertilizer use.
0:08:37 Tamara Muruetagoiena: The reasons and their priorities differ a little bit, but the practices are the same and extremely curious on embarking on these efforts, these journeys. Right. And so what this grant does is to compensate them for that so there’s not a loss of income in the process. And then also they can measure the most important metric for them that is always yield. Right. And see how changing their management practices that, you know, was either costly or complex does provide benefits from that for them in the long run, but also opening the doors for them in the market.
0:09:18 Tamara Muruetagoiena: How to tell the story better. We’re terrible about telling our story in our industry for the most part, so. But the grant is focusing on that, giving tools to the growers to tell their stories, connecting them with retailers so they can understand better what they’re doing. Because retailers are really focused on sustainability and Regen Ag, as I mentioned before.
0:09:40 Vonnie Estes: Is that a part we’re going to administer or IFPA doing that, or is that another part of the grant that someone else is going to work with retailers in the storytelling?
0:09:49 Tamara Muruetagoiena: We are the ones actually going to be leading that effort along with our partner at Measure to Improve. And IFPA is uniquely positioned to do that because we represent the entire supply chain and because in our past we had a huge focus on market and advancing the industry in markets, in shows, et cetera. We do conferences, we convene the industry so we could put suppliers and buyers together. And that’s how I think there we could benefit very much the grower community here.
0:10:27 Vonnie Estes: I was talking to an investor yesterday who was doing the drumbeat of how risk averse growers are and I just, you know, I chuckle every time I hear that, you know, so that’s. It’s the riskiest business in the world to be in. How can you say that? But, you know, his point of course was, you know, when you’re trying to sell a new something into the, into producers, it’s really hard to do that because of the risk. And so that’s what I love about this program is that it really is, you know, they aren’t risk adverse like you said, they’re very curious, but they’re not going to risk their whole crop to something that they don’t know if it works or not.
0:11:02 Vonnie Estes: So it’s really important to be able to help them and adopt some of these practices in a way that isn’t so risky for them.
0:11:10 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Absolutely. I think that’s a huge point that we need to make. Our industry is the opposite of risk adverse because all of our crops, all fruits, vegetables and flowers, grow in a very short cycle. And so they’re continuously changing and evolving. So it’s a very rapid, fast furious type of industry that works with highly perishable products that need to go from field to market in a heartbeat because otherwise they decay.
0:11:41 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And so short cycles, short supply chains, fast, complex. So all of that makes that mentality and culture in our industry of risk taking and also fast at making decisions My past is in forestry and I can tell that it’s a huge difference in that industry versus ours. That industry is a very, very slow pace. They’re adverse to risk taking because those crops are longer term, more complex. And so they get, quote, unquote, more stuck.
0:12:14 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Our industry is anything but stuck. It has the opportunity to continuously evolve and advance and try new things because their cropping season is so short.
0:12:25 Vonnie Estes: Yeah, definitely. And you know, one storm can come in and wipe it all out.
0:12:29 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So there’s that. Yeah, risk is always there. They’re used to that. Yeah, it’s not great, but it’s. It’s there. Yeah.
0:12:37 Vonnie Estes: Are you finding that a lot of the growers that you’re talking to and working with that are interested? Are they people that, like, this is the first time they’ve tried regenerative practices, or is it people that have been in it for a long time or you’ve seen a mix?
0:12:50 Tamara Muruetagoiena: It’s fascinating because I sit in a lot of that initial meeting with a grower when we’re going through the program and, and you listen to the way they talk. They know exactly what they want, exactly what they want to try. They’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, or they’ve been maybe experimenting with it in another field, but they know their stuff. And for a sustainability professional, this is my favorite part because we include one important question in that initial meeting. We say, why are you doing this?
0:13:27 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And the answer, sometimes, you know, it’s just this makes my day. They’re doing it for the right reasons. They tell you they’re doing it for sustainability, they’re doing it for the land, they’re doing it for health, they’re doing it for all the right reasons. They’re really investing in being a more sustainable type of production system. They’re really getting the cues from the world and they want to be there.
0:13:53 Tamara Muruetagoiena: They’re really interesting, curious about regen ag, and they want to excel at it. And so that’s one way we’re helping them. But they’re there already. They know exactly what they’re doing and want to do.
0:14:06 Vonnie Estes: One of the things that I see a lot and is a big part of been my job forever is just seeing how we can get technologies like these new technologies to scale. So you get people, you know, things really work in a small plot, or they work at the university, or they work in some trials somewhere and then really thinking about, well, how do we get these new technologies that could be amazingly regenerative to scale?
0:14:29 Vonnie Estes: So how do you think that this program is going to help move kind of from theory to actual practice on people’s farms and scale up the technology so we can get out there to other people beyond the program.
0:14:42 Tamara Muruetagoiena: I think that’s the biggest benefit of this program is that we’re going to experiment with these practices in a real world scenario, take information from it, take data from it. Right. That could be translated to growers elsewhere in the US and around the world and in other crops as well. We’re trying to be very diverse in our, in our, in the crops that we’re, that we have in our program. And, but we’re focusing our program geographically between California and in Washington state.
0:15:14 Tamara Muruetagoiena: But there’s a climatic diversity there that can be extrapolated to many other regions in the country and around the world. So I think that the learning and I think the most powerful thing is that how much we’re going to learn and how much we can teach everyone and educate everyone on these practices in other cropping systems as well and in other geographies.
0:15:37 Vonnie Estes: So let’s talk a little bit about the business case of these practices. So at the end of the day, growers run businesses. Where does the economic return actually show up and is it yield stability, input efficiency, market access, premiums, resilience? What are, what are some of the areas where they’re. This is going to be a positive beyond the program.
0:15:57 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So I think that from an economic and business standpoint in particular, I mean we could talk about the environmental benefits, the health benefits, all of those things. But I think that the financial and business, you know, yeah, financial and business strictly we will get information and to see that input cost is reduced through these practices. So that’s one. Right. Cost reduction, you know, more effective, more efficient type of production systems in terms of irrigation and nutrition.
0:16:28 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And then in terms of how. Oh, and then we will learn about yield. Right? Is it impacting yield? Is it increasing yield? What is. Or, and this is not. We’re not measuring this yet. But I think the next frontier, enough with this grant in the future is about, you know, is this affecting quality? Is this affecting flavor? Something that you love to talk about and also how they go to the market. So the very, you know, how these growers go to the market and how they market their products.
0:16:57 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So right now the market wants Regen Ag. They want it. They just don’t know how to package it. They just don’t know how to market it. So that’s the reality as well. So we know that a number of retailers are Giving benefits to regenerative growers and practices and putting them in different parts of the retailer space and give them preferences and telling their stories, etc. So I think that that is where it goes to see like, you know, are you being supported amplified at the marketplace by.
0:17:29 Tamara Muruetagoiena: With these practices? So that’s why we are pushing for. I’m not sure how price is going to change that. We will see that right as, as the project goes along. But I think that at this stage in the regenerative conversation, I don’t think we’re there yet. It’s more about product preference from the retailer side, product placement and how they place it, also how they tell the story, et cetera, and at the retailer and also other buyers as well. Because it could be food service, et cetera, because that’s a huge part of the industry that sometimes we forget to talk about because we see retailers, you know, grocery stores more often, but food service is ginormous and is equally interested in region Ag.
0:18:11 Vonnie Estes: Yeah, you see it written on a lot of menus, you know.
0:18:13 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Exactly.
0:18:14 Vonnie Estes: I think people make those preferences and I, I think that whole market alignment is so important because what we see with everything that people grow in our industry, if the market doesn’t pull it through, doesn’t value it, doesn’t care about it, then doesn’t matter. And why should growers bother? I mean there is the whole story about the environmental story which is super important. But I think for growers making decisions and taking risks, we need that market alignment to pull it through.
0:18:42 Vonnie Estes: So you’re seeing and through this program, will you work with some retailers to try to pull it through and get that market alignment?
0:18:50 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Absolutely. So we will be connecting with the retailers in our network to see how we, we can help events and place these producers and these products. Also we, we have something that we think is really cool that was very successful last year and is that we had regen AG tour, physical tour of the IFPA global show that we have every year. So last year was in Anaheim, this year is in Orlando. What we did there is that we had companies that are working on region ads to be telling their story. We brought people who registered for the tour. So physically we walked them through the show floor and visited each one of those companies and how they talk about what they’re working on and why they’re working on it.
0:19:48 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And I think it was a great opportunity for retailers. There were a lot of, there were journalists, there were, there were politicians, there was just a mixed bag of people there who are really interested in seeing it real life and seeing them tell their story and what they’re doing. So we’re going to do that this year again. I think that’s a great initiative. Further education panels, we will have field days in which we would love to connect. Also the market. So the buyer community with the growers.
0:20:24 Vonnie Estes: Great. Yeah, that, that connection is important. And the tour was amazing. I was working and just got to look at it happening, but it was. There was a lot of people involved and I think it really brought to light, you know, all parts of the supply chain.
0:20:38 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Right, Exactly. Now.
0:20:40 Vonnie Estes: So what does success look like if we’re sitting here and four years and, and we say that, oh, the program worked? What’s different for the participating growers and what’s different for the, you know, what was the real impact of the program?
0:20:54 Tamara Muruetagoiena: The protagonists of this story are the growers. So for the grower community, I hope that one, they got to trial practices that they were important to them first of all, and they got compensated for. So there was no financial loss and so they were advancing in their already existing goals. So that’s one also for the grower community that we can help them be better prepared for. What the market is demanding in this case is regenerative agriculture, even if it’s at its infancy in the way it’s which market it. But we’re going to help them with that.
0:21:36 Tamara Muruetagoiena: And then the third so important is that we’re going to get this wealth of information, data for all of us about how this work and how can this be applied at a larger, larger scale and what worked and also what didn’t work so well. All of that will be extremely important. Learning. A huge learning opportunity for our industry.
0:22:02 Vonnie Estes: So if a grower. You’re still recruiting growers, right?
0:22:04 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Yes, we are, yes.
0:22:05 Vonnie Estes: So if a grower is listening to this or they know someone and they’re thinking maybe this is worth exploring, what should they do? And what would you say to a grower that’s like, well, I don’t know if I want to do it. That’s kind of on the fence.
0:22:17 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Come to us, come to ifpa, Google us and you’ll find us. And then you can have a conversation with us. Even if you’re just mildly curious, just talk to us. I think there’s a huge opportunity for them. The compensation package is significant and also the learning opportunity also and the support that you will get from us and our partners from Measure to Improve will be a very great experience. Also, you will get to meet other growers who are working like you and growers are extremely collaborative. They learn. They love to learn from one another.
0:23:06 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So this is a great opportunity for them to collaborate and to learn from others.
0:23:12 Vonnie Estes: So is there a deadline or is it kind of a rolling application? Is there a deadline when they need to reach you?
0:23:18 Tamara Muruetagoiena: No, huge deadline. But we have a timeline that we want to follow. We would like that by the end of the fall, we have recruited all of the growers necessary. We’re very confident that we will. This project, it’s been going on for two years. We had a year stop for the transitioning in the administration, but in the. Even in the previous iteration of the project, the project was very successful in terms of engagement with growers and recruitment.
0:23:52 Tamara Muruetagoiena: So I think that we will be equally successful this time.
0:23:56 Vonnie Estes: And it’ll fill up. So if. Don’t wait. If you’re.
0:23:59 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Don’t wait, don’t wait. Just come to us. This is, I think, a really fantastic opportunity for them. I’m only grateful to be able to work with them.
0:24:09 Vonnie Estes: And it’s mostly focused. California, Washington states and any specialty crop. Is that?
0:24:15 Tamara Muruetagoiena: All of them.
0:24:17 Vonnie Estes: Okay.
0:24:17 Tamara Muruetagoiena: The full gamut. So fruit, vegetables, and flowers. As long as your fruits, a vegetable or a flower, you’re welcome to come to our program. California and Washington State this time. We wanted to keep it manageable for us and highly focused. Great.
0:24:40 Vonnie Estes: Well, thank you, Tamara. I’m so excited to see this up and going again. And it, it makes such a difference because, you know, we’re developing and where in my seat, we’re developing all these different technologies that never make it to market. And so this is a way to, like, get the risk off the growers and get products and, and and practices to market that is better for the growers, the consumer, the retailer, the planet. So thank you for working on this program and I really appreciate you talking about it.
0:25:06 Tamara Muruetagoiena: Thank you, Vonnie, for amplifying our voice and always for a great conversation.
0:25:12 Intro Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to fresh takes on tech, hosted by Vonnie Estes. If you enjoyed the conversation, please subscribe, rate and share it with your network. You can find more episodes and resources at freshproduce.com
0:25:24 Intro Speaker:
0:25:24 Intro Speaker: See you next time for another fresh take.
