Interview with Nick Wallace, founder & CEO of Wallace Family Farms and Ninety-Nine Counties
Regenerative Agriculture Interview Series #2
As regular readers might recall, I'm pursuing a business model that will enable more farmers to adopt regenerative agriculture by overcoming the barriers to doing so. I’ve identified these barriers as:
Access to capital
Access to midstream processing
Scale
Uncertain carbon markets
I’ve decided to invite you into my diligence process and share the conversations I’ve been having with experts, and the feedback they are providing. This is the second of six interviews with a variety of professionals and experts in regenerative agriculture.
Our second interview is with Nick Wallace. Nick and I were introduced by a mutual friend at Practical Farmers of Iowa and talk weekly about our dreams to transform agriculture. Nick is a 3rd generation farmer in Keystone, Iowa. He is as passionate as anyone I’ve met about regenerative agriculture and its ability to heal the land and our health. Nick and I have a shared dream to see Iowa returned to native pasture land for ruminants and far fewer acres of mono-cropped corn and soybeans.
What is your background and how did you get involved in regenerative agriculture? I grew up in a small farming town in the 80’s. The farm crisis taught my family some very real lessons. My father was born a farmer. Soil and ruminants run deep in his DNA. Even with this passion, intuition, and love for the land, 22% interest rates will bury the best of men.
The only survivors of the 1980s farm crisis were those with big cash reserves and land that was owned. My father had neither. Flash forward 20 years and our family had another chance to farm. I was fresh off a diagnosis and survival of cancer. It's impossible to pinpoint the cause, but my eyes were certainly opened to both the widespread presence of environmental toxins and the links between a lack of nutrition and the body’s immune response. We started doing our own research, and although we knew that food that had once been grown by small farmers was being replaced by a much larger multinational corporate structure, we hadn't appreciated the impact that it has had on the nutrient density of the food that's being produced.
Large corporations have replaced the small network of regional farmers feeding the country at a rapid pace. We determined the future might just be ready for regenerative agriculture and regenerative food.
With this new revelation, we as a family decided to embark on our own journey to create a grass-fed beef and meat company called Wallace Farms. In a short period of time we started partnering and aggregating with other like-minded farmers. We went from a few customers to hundreds as the years moved along. Now we serve over a thousand customers, primarily in the Iowa and Chicago region, along with shipping to customers in the lower 48.
For a few years now I’ve been brainstorming a new concept...one that will unite all of Iowa and will begin to transform our great state into a regenerative powerhouse of food production. I’m calling it 99-Counties. The goal is to develop three platforms...Farmers, Processors, and Consumers. All three platforms have to exist in harmony and work together to bring real food to those who seek it. One cannot exist without the other long-term. We have some of the best soil in the world here in Iowa and we grow 2 crops that can’t be fed to people. Our small towns and processors, or as I like to say “artisan food makers” are dying on the vine, and our citizens are as sick as they have ever been. 99-Counties is looking these failures square in the eye and creating beautiful systems to bring health to the state.
What is your definition of regenerative agriculture? It is not enough to be sustainable. To just sustain the current status quo will not replace the soil health lost over the last century. Sustaining won’t heal the people who inhabit this world.
Regenerative farming practices take what currently exists and improves upon them. Each year the farmer and animals in concert with each other build organic matter, biodiversity, and soil health. Long rotations of both plant and animal diversity must be present in regenerative agriculture. Small grains, clovers, alfalfas, other legumes, forbs, and a mix of grasses need to come and go within the system. Some to be made for winter, many to be grazed in rotation throughout the growing season. Large and small ruminants, along with poultry should be used for harvesting energy from the sun and leaving behind fertility for the next surge of crops.
Farms and farmers used to understand this need for pulsing the land. If corn was grown, then that demanding crop would not see that land again until the soil was recharged with legumes and ruminants. Cover crops for winter also need to be integrated. The soil is always alive and working, so it needs a crop to dance with...rye, grasses, legumes and other plants should be growing as much as possible. To leave the soil bare for long periods of time is not looked upon kindly by mother nature. If you don’t cover her up, she’ll find a way to cover up and those are called weeds.
What do you see as the fastest way to create 60 new regenerative farms in the next three years? Most would say we need to support farmers, change policy in Washington D.C., create new programs and subsidize programs like we do with wind and solar. My approach is to start with the consumers…those who want healthy food from the farms that populate the rural landscape. You can prop up and create 60 farms, but if you don’t turn on the consumer to eat all that food, you are destined to fail. My father always said one of the very first contracts that existed in society was between someone who grew or foraged for food and someone who was hungry. We have far too many people involved in that original contract. It’s time to get back to the direct connection between a farmer and someone who is hungry.
A concept I am fleshing out that has real potential is a collective. A few hundred families commit to funding a farm just on the outskirts of a major city. The farm provides not only food but a source of community, a place of gathering, and connection to the earth.
Processing kitchens turn the ripe, fresh picked fruits and vegetables into soups, sauces, and other value-added meals for winter consumption. Medicinals can be grown and reintroduced into “food as medicine” therapy. Workshops and overnight retreats can offer the members a valuable recharge of body, mind, and soul. With the state of the world and the outsourcing of food to corporations, this vertically integrated approach to farm, farmer, and food is not only smart, but could prove the next big valuable trend in the way consumers think about food security and integrity.
What do you see as the biggest challenges to adopting regenerative agriculture? And the biggest misconceptions associated with it? Money. I hate to make it as simple as that but in most cases this is the obstacle. Some farmers want to do better by their land and animals, but if that choice pays less and the mortgage, rent, or heavy burden of bills don’t pencil out then they can’t commit and take the risk. The transition from a chemical system to a biological system currently requires several years of transitional pain. Crop yields and hence income will be lower initially as you wait for the benefits of richer soil and biological diversity to kick in.
The decision to adopt regenerative agriculture is hard for many producers not only due to this transition risk, but also because the incentives of government programs and large corporate supply chains encourage large commodity production. In order to get by many producers have learned how to play that game well and are comfortable with the lower risk in this system. We’ve entered a new paradigm with farming and food. Consumers are starting to catch on that regenerative farming and food checks many of their boxes. Better flavor, better for the farmer, better for the air and water, better for the ecosystem. Even with higher price tags people are beginning to prioritize purchases centered around food.
The biggest misconception around organic, regenerative, or even sustainable farming is that it won’t yield and can’t “feed the world”. The last time I checked, the world wasn’t asking us to feed it. People around the world can easily feed themselves in their regional ecosystems. Of course we will enjoy olive oil and salt from lands outside our reach, and those specialties should be shared and enjoyed around the world, but the majority of nutrient-dense calories should and can be grown, processed, and consumed within a day's drive of most people. In Iowa alone, taking 20% of the state and raising just grass-fed beef, would yield 1 billion pounds of nutrient dense protein. Think about that the next time the Farm Bureau spins up its “feed the world” propaganda.
What do you see as the best way to improve alignment between landowner and farmer, in the cases where the land is rented? Most landowners are going to need to see their 3% return. In some cases, a 1-2% return is a possibility but that is the outlier. In a perfect world, the landlord is both paid top dollar for the land they own and over the course of the next decade the farmer shows them the abundance of health and diversity created on their land by regenerative practices. Somewhere in this process, the landowner may be drawn in to partner with the farmer to create even more regenerative farms. Human nature will also take over and the landowner will start sharing the success of their farms and convince many others in their sphere to turn neighboring farms into regenerative as well. A movement can begin…
Are you a believer in soil carbon markets (and if so how big of a climate mitigation opportunity do you believe it to be)? No, I don’t like carbon markets. I think the carbon markets will be corporate driven and will be another tool to extract the hard work of the regenerative farmer’s practices for profit and control of said farmer in the years ahead. That’s even assuming the carbon sink is real. Fraud will permeate this sector and you’ll see big commodity farmers getting paid for practices that they already use with minor tweaks. Corporations and Governments will continue to pollute and will use carbon markets and buy backs to “greenwash” the public.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see an honest system where producers are rewarded and incentivized for land stewardship that results in more carbon in the soil. The problem with creating a global or national carbon market is that it will undoubtedly include the government and once the government is involved things become more complicated.. It’s not that government employees or programs are ill intentioned but when the people making the decisions are thousands of miles away and subject to the influence of large corporate lobbyists the results are typically not great for individual producers as history shows.
There are many smart investors and scientists who believe that in 50 years most of our vegetables will be grown in indoor vertical farming warehouses and most of our meat will be produced in a lab. Do you think there will continue to be a place for meat, produce and grains that come from nature and not from a lab? That’s not a world I want to be a part of, and neither will millions of other human beings of this world. Every bit of our body came from the soil, and to the soil we shall return. When a grass-fed ruminant’s flatulence is more dangerous than glyphosate or dicamba, per EPA, FDA, WHO, USDA, etc then we have major systemic issues of intellectual thought. The real question you need to ask is if we will have the freedom to farm as we choose? Today we do not have that freedom. Today we live in a world of cheap food which has negative human health and environmental implications. That cheap food is the result of agricultural subsidies from the federal government, the consolidation of feed, chemical and machinery companies by big corporations and scientific “advancements” such as glyphosate and GMO corn. All of these have combined to produce a Midwest where the majority of the land is used to produce two crops, corn and soy, most of which do not actually result in human consumption. If we desire to have independent, sovereign farmers populate the countryside, produce nutrient dense food and restore our soils, something needs to change.
My takeaways from this interview:
Regenerative agriculture is alive and well in Iowa! Many outsiders to farming, myself included, often picture Iowa and the midwest in general as a continuous monoculture of corn and soy. But people like Nick Wallace do exist. In fact I met many others like him on my road trip through Iowa several months ago. To me the passion that Nick has for regenerative agriculture and the success he has had in growing his brand is proof that this is the beginning of a massive movement in US agriculture.
Regenerative agriculture is as much about healing human health as it is about healing the environment: As Nick’s personal health journey illustrates, for many the inspiration to start farming in a regenerative way is personal health. I too have found, in my many conversations with potential customers and investors, that regenerative agriculture resonates most deeply with those who understand its many health benefits.
Major cash reserves and / or land ownership are key to survival for small farms: The heart wrenching story of what happened to Nick’s father is one known all too well by many farmers in America. It’s why many people I meet often say “my grandfather had a farm”. Perhaps as I have written before there is a way to aggregate many small farms together so that together they can better weather the volatility of the broader market.
Regenerative agriculture and capitalism are actually in harmony: The reason regenerative agriculture is catching on is because consumers like it and are willing to pay more for it. If we are to increase the adoption of regenerative agriculture we must continue to build the brand and customer connection that Nick so eloquently described.
The final three takeaways eerily echo exactly those of the last interview:
We must find ways to contractually increase alignment between landowner and operator: the key to increasing the adoption of regenerative agriculture is aligning both the landowner and operator on a shared vision of regenerative agriculture that not only restores the land but is more profitable for both parties.
The opportunity to get soil carbon markets right is massive: if you doubted my earlier writing that farmers were skeptical of carbon markets, Nick’s disdain for them probably jumps right off the page. But you’ll note that he doesn’t have a problem with the concept at a high level. Instead he has a deep mistrust of how it will be implemented and integrity maintained. So it won’t be easy… but nothing worth doing is ever easy.
I am not the only person who would rather eat food from nature than food grown in a lab :-)! Yes, you could argue that these interviews are cherry-picked with people who happen to agree with my views, but who do you think better represents the average views of someone from Iowa? You or Nick?