so it's just last month
I was visiting with a local farmer
out on long island
his name is Lyle
and Lyle grows zucchini
and at some point during the conversation i asked him how he closed
out last year
If it was a good year for him
and i was surprised when he told me no
in fact he lost money last year
he lost sixty thousand dollars
now pause on that for a second just think about it
imagine working an entire year as hard as you can
and not getting a single paycheck
and then at the end of that year having to come up with sixty thousand
dollars in cash
just to stay afloat
that's what happened to Lyle
and the irony is
the reason this happened
is because Lyle is a good farmer
who doesn't take shortcuts
and grows responsibly
and turns out vegetables
that taste the way that they're supposed to
the problem is
they cost a little bit more to do that
and when it came time for him to harvest his crop
he couldn't get the little i mean little
premium that he needed to cover its costs
now the sad part in this the really sad part in this story
is that Lyle
had to sell off the rights to some of his land
land that had been in his family
for thirteen generations
to cover that loss
now there is a fundamental flaw
in the way that we think about and value food in this country
if guys like Lyle that are doing the right thing
can't even sustain their own farm
now before i go off in a rant
let me tell you who I am and why i'm here. I'm a retailer
specifically an online food retailer
with a company called fresh direct
and my role was kind of unique
because i don't spend my time in office or a board room
I spend it traveling
around the country sometimes even the world
working with some of the most interesting
and inspiring true
food experts that I've ever met
farmers and ranchers and fishermen
the people that are catching and growing the food that we eat
and i spent real time with them on their land and on their boats really
trying to learn how they do what they do
understanding what their challenges are
but most importantly i'm building a relationship with them
a relationship that's built on trust and transparency
and i want to share
some of the insights that i've had in the field with you
insights that i believe can help change the way we eat
by simply simply changing
the way we value fresh food today
and i want to start in the produce industry
because today's produce farmers
their growing strong fruit
fruit that can withstand thousands of miles of travel
yet still look great by the time it makes it onto the supermarket shelf
the problem is to gain that durability and strength
we're breeding out and sacrificing the flavor and the taste
and if these farmers i want to pick on something that i call the super
strawberry
if these farmers
which just take that strawberry and ripen it a little bit more
before they cut it off the stem
it could be ten times better
but they can't
that's what they should look like but they can't
and the reason they can't is because that little strawberry
has a really tough road to travel
you see from the time
it's picked its cut and i've done this trip
from the time it's cut off the planet
it gets whisked inside to get cooled down as quickly as possible
and then eventually it makes it on a truck, on a big truck
that's going to take it across the country
where it ends up
in a distribution center
and from the distribution center eventually it's gonna make it into a
store onto the shelf you guys are gonna buy it and you're gonna get it home
and that strawberry is still going to look great and you're gonna
expect it to look great for another four to five days
that's a super strawberry
but the problem is
to be honest
they kind of suck
they don't taste good
they don't they don't taste good
and i'm picking on the strawberry though it's not just strawberries
it's mangos and melons, peaches and plums and nectarines, it's almost all
fruit that's being picked before it's prime because it's easier for us to
handle
and i'm not sure that this strategy is working
if you think about the health of our country
because people if they don't like that fruit
they're going to eat other things they're going to be processed foods
that are full fat and sugar and salt
foods that are practically engineered to be crack for the taste buds
and its hurting us if you look at some of the statistics
with the diabetes and the obesity
and the sodium and we're still not eating the fruits and vegetables that we
should
so then the question is why
why are farmers doing this, why are farmers growing food that doesn't taste good
well it's not their decision
all they're doing is listening to their customer
and their customer isn't who you think
the customer isn't you the eater that's actually eating the food
the customer of the farmer
is me, it's the retailers, the supermarkets
and the real mind bender on this one is that the priorities of the supermarket
are completely different than your priorities
you see a typical produce buyer cares about three things
he wants a piece of fruit that's gonna look great
that's gonna last a really long time
and it better have a great price
but things like flavor and taste
they don't come up that they do not come up in the conversations
and that's a complete opposite of what you want, the eater, you want a piece of
fruit that actually taste great
and yeah price is important
but look at the farmers market and CSAs and co-ops
we've proven that people are willing to pay a little bit more for something
that they can actually enjoy eating
we've got to get
farmers to grow food
that's good for you, not what's best for the supermarket
and the good news is its happening I'm meeting more and more farmers
that are thinking about flavor and taste and less about what it looks like or how
long it's gonna last
like this one
her name is Diana Russell and she grows melons out in california actually
arizona and they're terrific
and i actually went out and visited her to learn how she did it
and her strategy is actually really simple
you see they start with seeds
and variety to bred for flavor
not what they look like a how long they last
and then she plants them
and lets them grow up
but the real difference
is in how she harvests them
she calls it
she calls it the
the forgotten art
of harvesting flavorful fruit
you see a typical melon grower will plant a field of melons
and let em grow
and when they're reading
he'll go out into the field and harvest them all of them
whether they're ripe or not because that's the cheapest and most economical
way to do it
at the sacrifice of flavor
but Diana is different
every morning
she goes out she wades out into the field with her team
and her very large knife
and she starts whacking them
and cutting it open and tasting them
and when she finds a patch that she likes and is ripe, she'll harvest that patch
and she'll let the other ones sit
for another day
something else that she told me that's interesting she believes that the sugar
content in a melon
goes up and down
throughout the day
based on the temperature
the hotter the temperature
the higher the sugar level lower the temperature the less the sugar level
so rather than harvest
at five in the morning when its coolest out and most comfortable
she's out there at noon
the day that i was there it was 98 degrees and she told me that that
was cool
and the only reason that she can do this
is because she's in the field with her team
every other melon grower in california contracts out the
harvesting
but not her she runs her own team
and she's in the field with her team so she can make sure that there's cold water
and shade blocks
and that people can take breaks because she's right next to them
and that's what makes her special
and there are others, theres a million stories i can tell you stories about
Eberhard Muller
guys remember him
he was a four-star chef in manhattan
who woke up one day
and suddenly decided that being a four-star chef in manhattan
just wasn't challenging enough
So he quit
and became a local farmer
and he's killing it and he's turning out fantastic vegetables right here on
Long Island
or
Sandy Lewis
who was a banker, actually he's a
he told me he's a treasurer
or was it an treasury now
he's a cattle farmer in
upstate new york six hours from here
people cal him the cow whisperer
and he's growing the only certified organic grass fed beef in the country
or guys like this guy, scott blake
who's a salmon fishermen in alaska
who knows the copper river better than the back of his hand
and he was so upset with the way that his fish
was getting handled in transportation once a left alaska he opened up his own
company
called copper river seafoods and he figured out
how to get us the freshest wild salmon eighteen hours after left the water
look there's a ton more but you get the point
there are some amazing farmers out there now
that are growing really high quality food
responsibly but you don't know them
and how could you
they're not food celebrities they don't have shows
on the food network
but they should
these are the people that should be inspiring us about food
not the guy who's claim to fame is eating the biggest burrito in the world
Yeah nice
so look heres what I want to do, I want to disrupt this food system i actually
call it project disruption
where we're going to press the other retailers to take a higher standard
and get behind the farmers but I can't do it alone
we need to do it together and there is a role that you guys can play
because as long as you continue to buy those giants tasteless strawberries
there's no incentive for anybody to change their ways
those guys actually think the strawberries are good
but we have to prove a point
so here's what i want you to do
the next time you go to the supermarket
and you buy some fruit and you take it home
and you cut it open and you eat it and it's disappointing
because it doesn't taste good
bring it back
return it to the store
just like you would return a sweater something bring it back and say i don't
like the way a taste
and if enough people did that
the supermarkets and retailers will get the point that hey we have to actually
step up our standards
but tonight uh...
but understand
the way i see it the real responsibility here lies on me
and every other retailer
that sells food for a living
we the retailers of this country need to stand up
and accept at least partial responsibility for this food mess that
we've got ourselves into
this isn't the farmers fault
were the ones that are pushing the farmers to take the shortcuts
to pick the fruit before it's ripe
because it's easier for us to handle it
to grow the beef as cheaply as possible
and feed lots
so that we can sell steaks for five dollars a pound
to grow salmon that we know who is not sustainable
because it's just too hard to explain to our customers
why wild seven is better
and worth the premium
we need
to explain our role
is not simply to sell food
as merchant traders that make a buck off of each transaction
our role is to sell food knowledgeably to customers
and to teach customers
and to explain to customers why spending
ten cents more
on a zucchini from a guy like Lyle
makes sense
and to turn our customers on to better tasting food
here's another one that i have for all the retailers out there
go through
and taste
all of your fruit
in every store
everyday
and rate it
and rate it not on how good it is
but on how good it can be
and stuff thats great give it five stars
and stuff thats lousy give it now and i guide the customers into the things that a
seasonal that are good
your customers will love you for
but most of all
for me for you for the retailers for everybody
we need to engage our farmers
we need to encourage them to take chances on improving the food that we
eat
making sure that they know that were behind them
otherwise one day
they won't be there
but the good news is they still are
in fact
all the folks that i talked about today
last friday night i had an idea i said hey would you be willing
would you be willing
to come in
and come up on the stage with me so that the folks here
could show
the appreciation for all the work
and effort to you guys have put forth
yeah if only they were here...Come on
that's that's right now
I want to just
I want to just introduce everybody to you
this you saw the picture of him, this is sandy lewis from upstate new york
aka cow whisperer
this is Paulette Satur from Satur farms Eberhards wife who I didn't
mention
when we first tried launching a local problem program eight years ago i went
out to long island to get all of these farmers
to worker with expecting big embraces from them
not only did they not wanna work with me they didn't even want to talk to me
because i was a retailer so i got paullette at to spend weeks with me going from
farm to farm because they trusted so than people that
Eberhard mueller four-star staff turned farmer
mileage for us all
from sandstone Melons
diana russell
from Sandstone
and last but not least
Lyle wells the guy
who next year will not lose money
my name is david mcintyre and i i'm a fan of the farm