Low Carb Paleo Show 136 Cody Hopkins – Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative Interview

good morning Cody and welcome to the rockabilly Oh show thanks for having me good morning it's our pleasure a good morning mark how are you wonderful thank you can't complain well you know the rules nobody nobody listens when you complain - why bother right so Cody you are the CEO of grass roots farmers as I came across you great meat products at paleo FX 2019 and fell in love so we had to talk to you so regarding your background can you tell us about your professional background before and as you got into this business sure yeah well I'm a native arkinson grew up in rural Arkansas grip on a small family farm but we didn't really farm for profit it was you know but but I grew up really experiencing nature farm life and but you know ended up you know as many kids in rural America thought that I wanted to leave and go off to the city and and not coming back and so when I often got a degree in physics and then I got a job in the Northeast teaching high school physics and math at a college prep high school and moved away and did that for several years and sort of sprinkled along that journey I had a couple of different food experiences that really started pushing me to developing an interest in high quality food and looking at food not only as an amazing experience but also as medicine in a lot of ways and so while living in the Northeast I I worked at a restaurant that a James Beard Award main restaurant that was really kind of ahead of its time this was in the early 2000s before the local food movement had really gotten much steam here in the US and and had a couple experiences where I you know I didn't really like tomatoes but I tomato there that just blew my mind the flavor was so good and every night before diving service we would go over the menu and they would talk about you know make sure everyone knew where which farm the food came from and had the production methodology of how those farms were raising that the whether it was the corn or the pork or whatever it might be and if that really stuck with me and you know after a couple years of living up there I was I had decided that you know actually I really miss Arkansas and was eager to move back home and so moved back to rural Arkansas continued my passion from a developing passion and food managed a small bakery in the Ozark Mountains here in Arkansas and was it seemed to do something that was a little bit more you know tied to the land and you know I grew up on a small farm about 40 acres and it was something that that you know I just really wanted to get back to my roots I guess is the way to put it and about that time I met my now wife who was had just graduated college and was in you know grew up in the area where I was working at the bakery and we started and we both had this interest and were heavily influenced by a book be read by Michael Pollan The Omnivore's Dilemma yeah and I've read about some farmers doing you know some really innovative livestock farming where they were farming with the land improving the quality of the land producing these amazing amazing quality meats and and then going directly to the customer to to sell those products and developing a relationship with the customer and so it just you know that's kind of the Cliff Notes version my professional background and how it kind of led it led us lend me and then you know my now wife into into farming right right so as I understand what fruitfulness is not just you it's a combine different farmers growing different you know animals or products and can you explain the the principle of the business sure yeah so grass roots is actually a farmer cooperative so it is a group of farmers working together only as a cooperative to to share certain aspects so they're individually independent farms that share we work together we develop our consistent standards we all use the same production techniques the same feed and as a group we you know we work together to to sell our products under the grassroots brand and so and what that was born out of really was when we launched our farm in 2007 my wife and I from the beginning wanted to be not just a for-profit farm but we wanted to help educate other farmers on those production practices that were good for the land good for the animals and produce the superior quality and and from both flavor and health standpoint product and so you know we it was part of our mission from the beginning to help to work with other farmers and help other farmers succeed and what we realized as we started trying to grow our farm business was the the infrastructure that used to exist to support small family farms around the country no longer exists a vast majority 99% of the the meats produced in this country are produced by large industrial operations that that don't that small farmers you know support small farmers really so it's very difficult for a lot of barriers for small farmers to be able to succeed and so we saw working as a cooperative with other farmers as a way to start to break down some of those barriers for farmers and help farmers succeed and make it easier for customers to to get these kinds of products and so some of the things that we do as a co-op are we go we promote our message tell our story and help customers learn about what these farmers are doing we also help farmers you know we have technical we have people on staff that go out and train farmers on how to improve their production techniques how to become more efficient on their farms we do things like farmers our chicken farmers use non-gmo feed and we actually provide capital to those farmers to make it easier for them to expand their operations and so we help them cash flow some of their inputs and so we're doing all kinds of things along the value chain along the supply chain between the farmer and the customer that make it easier for the for customers to learn about and get these products while also making it easier for the farmers to succeed in their farm business sounds great you expending a sustainable way of farming and you're also in the process you are teaching people farmers to survive to live off their work instead of you know belly yeah and not only that but you also take care of that the the earth in this way in a sustainable manner which a lot of farmers have lost that knowledge so I think that's a great great standard and and one could argue that a lot of that will be very difficult if the internet didn't exist right absolutely yeah as you were saying that I'm thinking that one of the things that we do differently is a most agriculture over the past 75 200 years has been increasingly focused on least-cost production models which means like produce the chicken or the carrot or the tomato or the account as cheaply as possible right and so what happens when they do that is you you sacrifice all kinds of things for the sake of having the cheapest food you can possibly produce and that includes the environment animal welfare farmer welfare health for the customer and so you know we don't want it we want to prioritize those things we want to prioritize creating better soils we want to prioritize having a healthier product that customers that you know that benefits our customers that tastes better and we want to prioritize if farmers making a living wage doing this and so and that would not be possible if we had to go through the commodity market or our only option was trying to go through you know a a grocery store chain and being able to use the internet to connect directly with customers that are looking for this kind of product is a real game-changer for for for all kinds of businesses but certainly for the farmers that we work with it makes it possible for them to be able to do this right right so you have farmers all over the country right can you tell us where they are located now that this matter it's just to expand how widespread the operation is sure so just a little bit you know a background when we started though grass roots started in 2014 and you know we started from the game from the very beginning we partnered wi
th a wonderful nonprofit it's based out of Arkansas called heifer international efforts had a a presence in the US for 75 years now they've also they do a lot of their work and their know mostly for the international work but they partnered with grassroots farmers to help set up this value chain and provide the support we're providing for the farmers and the sort of seed that that business model and and so the initial group of farmers that started this in partnership with heifer were were based out of Arkansas and as we have it you've been able to grow our customer base it's been exciting to bring on more farmers and so now this year we'll work with somewhere between 30 and 40 farmers and we've expanded the farmers we have some in southern Missouri we have some in in in Western Oregon some beef farmers in western Oregon we have some in North Carolina some beef folks and grass-fed beef farmers we have some poultry farmers you work with in Texas and then some in Kentucky and so we are slowly expanding geographically to work with other groups of farmers that are meeting our standards and are facing the same kinds of challenges that that the original grassroots farmers were we're facing and and so it's exciting to be to start to work with a broader group of farmers and another thing to note is that everything that we sell is it has the grassroots label on it but we are very committed to going back to my my days working at Al Forno the restaurant the Northeast really impacted me we care deeply about transparency and traceability and so every single package that you get has a farm of origin stamp on it you know exactly what farm that came from and that's a that's a really important part important thing to me and the rest of the organization is really trying to educate customers on knowing your farmer knowing where it came from so that you know you can help to learn more about your products that more trust in in which we're getting right right so are you a farm with your local farmers today sell locally as well or just through you it depends I mean some sell just through grass roots some sell you know I might go to a farmers market and what we did what we found is that in the beginning farmers were selling a bit to the farmers market and a bit to grassroots but as grass roots has been able to grow demand you know find more customers attract more customers we've we've seen more farmers transitioning to selling more products through grassroots and so it's that's a exciting development and one of the things that's different about grassroots is that we are farmer owned and managed and so it's not like they are selling to a grocery store chain that could go out and find someone else who's going to be a lot cheaper you know this is an organization that's sort of the farmer for work you know we're thinking about farmers you know a lot and care about making sure farmers are making a livelihood and have security in doing this and so the way it's organized and governed this business is very different how prioritizes our relationships with farmers and other partners Jimmy are you open to accept more farmers you know yeah without the without requirements I I know one of my friend who runs a doc talk and ultra phone typically sells to restaurant locally but maybe it wouldn't hurt to for you to talk to him he does you know Doug brass and for God and things like that so that might be thing so uh you know once the show is over I would connect the two of you yeah yeah that sounds great yeah we actually don't have any duck farmers right now and that's something that that I would be interested in discussing now for sure we yeah and so and we have our we actually publish our standards or their websites we're very creates pattern about that right and we work with the farmers to make sure like one thing that's very unique about our chicken production and Turkey is that our chickens are you've heard the term free-range I'm sure yes free-range can mean a lot of different things they can simply be a chicken house with a hole knocked on the side of it and a dirt run around the outside of the chicken house and in a lot of cases the chickens don't go outside and if they do they're not on fresh grass and what grassroots farmers do is we actually have mobile pins that are on pasture that get moved every single day to fresh pasture and so that makes for a much healthier burn a much better flavor they get fresh grass every single day you don't have to use things like an ax Ericsson and it's better for the soil and a better farming environment too so I've seen that done that white oak forms in in Georgia I read their form we we interviewed him a couple years ago quite impressive yes juice a lot and solid that yes yes yes yeah yeah mark and I have been following this whole movement I mean I don't know if you remember would know but I'm a chef by trade so I've been supporting a kind of local food and all that so tell us about your quality standards what do you expect and require from your farmers to follow what kind of rules I feel tension non-gmo yeah so like I said we have our our standards are published on our site and so those are we require all the farmers to meet those standards the the beef is a hundred percent grass-fed and finished no grain ever you know they hey mate grass and you know that's yeah I think that's really speaking of so you come from you're from France I think that's really it's a really interesting terroir and the in the meats on the grass-fed side is the grass-fed beef side especially you also get that really across the spectrum all of our animals but definitely on the grass-fed beef and then also on the pork side so the pork you know I mean a consistent theme for all our all of our animals is instead of using a stationary confinement model which is the majority of the industrial meat in the majority of meat in the grocery store is raised in you know confinement operations where they are trying to produce it as cheaply as possible instead of moving the animals to fresh pasture they are giving them antibiotics and you know things that to keep them healthy when in an environment they really don't don't thrive in yeah and grown autumn and growth yeah they're trying to grow as fast as possible as cheap as possible and as you know less late you know the least amount of labor with you know our farmers you go to a grassroots farm the animals are always on the move and so the cattle are being moved once or twice a day to fresh grass and so what that does is it mimics the patterns you see in nature of herbivores moving across the plains and and you end up with you know better quality but their selection for the animals you don't get over grazing and you get nice long rest periods that allow the soils to thrive and then on the pork side we're actually we're ranging our pigs in a mix of pasture and forests and and they are also moving every you know once a week typically to a new area of forests or pasture and one of the great things about arranging the pigs and the forests is that they get access to all kinds of nuts and berries that they really love to eat so acorns hickory nuts muscadine grapes paw Paw's like all these different fruits and nuts that are really healthy for the animal and produce unique flavor profiles we just recently did a study on we sent some some of our port to a lab to have the omega-3 fatty acid ratio sampled and tested and the typical grocery store pork has about I think it was 70 milligrams of omega-3s and much of what the sample size was there but ours that same sample size ours had 700 milligrams so much like a you know 10 times higher omega-3 fatty acid content in in the same sample size at this point we probably should remind our listeners that Omega trees are the healthier type of offense and our brain functions on and it's not inflammatory where by the omega-6 or inflammatory intends to malfunction with the brain so to speak you know
and so that's why our ways and we always recommend grass-fed grass-finished or freeway because typically the animals meat contain a lot more omega-3s and regular industrial meat yeah thanks Redman that's a really important thing to highlight there so let's talk about the way you sustain your leg mm-hmm yeah what techniques using in you know you mentioned some of it already and so the same techniques we use to keep our animals healthy and to create a better working environment for the farmers and creates healthier food better tasting food also we get this is sort of the magic of it all there's a symbiotic relationship going on between the animals and the land that and the the consumer you know people that eat the product so there's a sort of symbiosis across this whole system here where we're not only making people healthier creating a better environment for the animals better environment for the farmers but we're also improving the quality of the soil so to give you an example we have we've tested fields on our pasture that when we took over in the phone were a head of organic matter which is the organic matter is a basically the humus in the soil that holds water and nutrients and the more that you have the better the quality of the soil so when it rains it'll hold more water when you know it's that it's a better seed bed it's a better you know the plants thrive a lot better and it creates healthier plants that will make the animals healthier and so one of the and also its sequester's carbon the more organic matter you have in the soil the more carbon that soil can pull out of the air let's let's address that issue because we're getting a lot of complaints from the vegan side of things about saying that beef is extremely detrimental the environment explain how your way raising your animals it's actually beneficial to the environment yeah so and we actually have that blog post on our site where we published this like these soil tests that showed the improvement in the organic matter and the so we were able to take a just one pasture that we sampled the organic matter went from 1.9 percent to almost for like three point nine percent organic matter now one way to show that that's improving the quality of the soil and how that impacts the environment is that for every percent organic matter increase you make in the soil an acre of soil that soil will hold twenty thousand more gallons of water when it rains right and so that particular acre is holding forty thousand more gallons of water because of the farming practices we've used to improve the soil so that's preventing runoff that's you know that's keeping helping deter grouts it's holding soil preventing erosion all kinds of things that you would not have in your traditional confinement production models where you end up with a you know a bunch of animals can find in one location where you have a concentration of manure and you end up with a waste problem versus improving fertility so please address the issue of the because we are bombarded with these global warming and blah blah blah can address the issue of the co2 captures so that you can actually justify your way of growing animals in being beneficial to the environment in general global environment yeah so let's see here I have a that here so actually in France we have France again they're say an initiate the French the French Ministry of Agriculture has initiative called the foreigner 1000 program alright and what they aren't promoting is that if the class across the globe on average we could increase the organic matter by 0.4 percent per year that would halt co2 that the annual increase in co2 right and to put that in perspective on our farm we have increased it by 37 percent per year so I mean we are you know like we have made enormous I think that there's a I mean they have the research to support this and this is not you know some liberal organization this is the you know the mystery of Agriculture in France promoting this and they have the science to back this up and we're showing that agricultural practices that we're using our you know far outpacing the benchmark they set and you know they are is I think that this is absolutely an attainable goal with the kind of production practices that we're using here now you know to go a little further down this track of you know should we eat meat or should we not eat meat all right so I am all for eating less meat but better quality meat yes I mean the average US consumer eats about 242 pounds of meat a year yeah so we think that's too much right but yeah exactly that's a lot of meat but we think that animals I mean our fertility comes from animals I mean when you separate animals from the farm and when we did that that's what happens we've separated animals from the farm and ended up with a confinement operation that create a waste problem and then a lack of fertility issue that is being addressed by chemical fertilizers and so you created two distinct problems one lack of fertility the other is a waste problem by separating animals from the farm so animals have a very important part in helping maintain and actually improve the quality of our soils right right I think we may be in trouble here you use the l word oh sorry sorry yeah yeah we know we'll keep it because we like to mark and I like to put the L ya know we're not necessarily against ml we're definitely against some of the you know policies and how they see the end of the world as you know as we speak and I guess you heard about the the new green do you have an opinion on that I don't you know I just it's the way I look at things is I see the world as I mean I love the and I'm very excited about the switch from sustainable to you regenerative yeah I think we can make the world a better place and I think that I feel pretty strongly that farmers have an important part in that and I think that it'll make consume you know make customers a lot healthier and I think that there's a I love the idea of this not being a you know government assistive program and instead this is us going direct this is really solving two distinct problems one is you know farmers are many many more than two actually but you get customers that are looking to be healthier looking for better quality products and you look farmers who are going to make a living farming in a way it's I've never met a farmer who wants to exploit the environment in their animals they just are just they're locked into a system that that sort of forces them to do that when they go out of business and so we're working to help solve connect you to solve those two problems by connecting the farmer and the customer and so it's really exciting like a market-based approach that to me is is not not top down is bottom up that's why we had lien grassroots right and what's impressive to me is that a young person like you would actually go out and encourage other young farmers to follow that path because a lot of young farmers are I feel stopped from going into Fahmy because they don't want to be part of that in just your system you just want to take care of the demand and the animals and so on so forth so III thank you for doing the work you do because that's extremely important for us for all of us yes farmers and us people as in general human beings yeah other reason why yeah this is important stat I think for everyone no but the average age of a farmer 60 years old today and so who's raised in our food in 10 15 20 years and so that's something that you're right young people do not want to get into industrial agriculture because it's not aligned with their values and it's uh you know it's a model that is increasingly becoming you know people just don't want to support that but we wanna make the world a better place not exploit the world for the cheapest meat possible right right speaking of that if you may allow me to be the devil's advocate for well you
know I'm also a nutritionist and what I meet clients and I tell them this is the kind of the quality of products you should be eating to stay it become more healthier to stay healthy and they say well this is way too expensive I can't afford this so some people will think of the kind of quality you provide is more elitist for like you know middle class upper middle class I can afford this kind of meat what do you say to that so one of the first things I say is do you know how much a Snickers bar costs per pan yeah no go ahead eleven dollars a pound by resident at grassroots co-op comm for less than that for less than $10 a pound right so I think yeah let me so we start there all right it's a matter how you prioritize how you spend your money right there's a lot more nutritional value in that it also comes down to people cooking like you you know it's true of nice thing about Snickers bars open it need it but people have to be able to cook you can take a whole chicken and get four or five six meals out of it depending on you know what you do with it and I think that I'm a real advocate for buying less meat and better quality I think there's a you know one of the things that I think Michael Pollan put the was the first person put this information together and in 1960 the average American spent seventeen point five percent of their income on food yep and in 5.2 percent on health care today that's totally flipped we spend 6.4 percent of our income on health and I'm sorry on food and in point eight percent on health care and so in my opinion I think there's a I mean it's correlation I mean you know but it seems like if people would spend much it's been more of their their budget on food I think they'd be a lot healthier and have an opportunity to spend less on health care and who had a much more pleasurable life too I think yeah let me tell you a little story I wrote a book because I thought that might be a good subject but I wrote about say out to heal out to eat healthy French cuisine for less than ten dollars a day uh-huh because a friend of mine challenged me and I was also replying to some of my clients complaining about the cost of healthy eating right and I sent my son out to check out the the cost of fast food mm-hmm you can easily if you eat breakfast lunch and dinner in fast food you can easily spend $15 sure in in garbage food I don't even call it food as even call it food not to mention all the packaging and all the waste generated and and the plastic and the paper and all of that so you consider that that you're actually paying all this money to eat garbage and for $10 a day I can prove it to you and actually put all the numbers together um that you can eat for less than $10 a day fresh healthy food right yeah can't sell the book and the book came out what pipes five years ago if I'd sold maybe ten in five years you know like and this is a cultural thing this in this country people have been brainwashed to buy convenience yeah everything is convenience everything's process everything is supposedly achieved short term but long term that's right you know like a friend of mine told me you know when when you compare the costs for example you know someone would complain that you know using my services is expensive and they say of you have you have costed out cancer lately yes yeah exactly ah right so you have to completely flip around your perspective from is it more important to spend a little more money on healthy food to keep you healthy and eat good quality food I'm a chef so my recipes are not just healthy they're good it tastes great yeah French recipes because my position is I diet if I put a client on a diet and the diet is boring and bland in you know they will never continue so I have to offer them good quality recipes and tasty and they can Dickens brag you know I'm eating French healthy food you know yeah but it's amazing how it's constant to the bottom to the cheap price when you pay I don't know a few dollars for a bag of sheep there's nothing but that for you instead of eating fruit for example just keep it simple right yeah yeah people have been so brainwashing to doing that that they when you when you expose them to another way of looking at it they are like they're completely lost I mean literally they're like they look at you like you're speaking of a complete different language I had a nice lady as a customer she had also served health issues she was eating breakfast lunch and dinner McDonald's I could I could not convince her to eat even one apple a day Wow Wow he just couldn't do it not even I said Widow BOGO why don't you order a salad it'll be a step in the right direction she's been she couldn't do it and she was a very nice lady and I just I had to give up on them because I just you know she's wasting our money and I'm wasting my time but yes this is what we're talking about so you and I and Mark and all those farmers out there are doing our best to provide the information and quality products to people and people should keep in mind that yes good quality food cost a little more but in the end it costs a lot less than doctors hospitals and medication right that's right yeah how many people are on multiple medications oh it seems like everybody these days right I mean it and they think it's normal yeah that's right I think it's normal you know what normal is is to be you know like Mark and I you know I don't remember mark are you over 60 I don't want is 21 in a bit it's just a very big people like me let's just not put mark in the picture here that is 66 years old and very good health yeah I did I do it mostly true nutrition I do exercise a little bit but not really that much considering the average American tendency to you know run and spend a lot of money on health clubs it's it's a whole concept garbage in garbage out if you put the orbit the body you're going to feel like garbage yeah yeah yeah matter how many hours in the gym you spend if you don't if your intake of food is not a high quality lower amount that's another issue which you address already is it's better to have higher quality but smaller amount of food of higher nutrition yeah and now not I did say overwork your system your body yeah because people will fit themselves or stuff themselves with poor quality food with no nutritional value yeah and they keep on eating all day because their bodies say you've you stopped me but you didn't feed me I'm not yeah you know so they constantly go up and down and eat snacks and you know to keep their level energy level weapon and then spend all that money and chains and all that which is ridiculous but yeah consider starting from the beginning which is the food we eat and and you basically I call it prevention medicine you know you put a little more in your food as medicine man you end up paying a lot less I don't I don't have any medication I don't take that's amazing that's as much on my health test every year you know with Medicare with not a no no problem yeah but it's so difficult to convince people to look at it this way as an America what's your what's your point of view on that yeah well I think that yeah it's so the customers up a large portion of the customers grassroots are have had some kind of health scare or have had somewhere the family had a health scare and they have seen the light you know that food is in what you eat matters right to your health we also have customers who see what you eat matters to you know the environment there's all kinds of things you know that the lowest cost meat or food production model externalizes all these things right health the environment animal welfare whatever it might be and so it's we're finding that customers are seeing that you have had some experience and then what really hooks them on top of that is the flavor is you know there's actually been interesting research around you know i
n healthier healthier vegetables and meats they have more nutrition have more flavonoids and so are you know they actually taste better have more flavor I was looking at a customer comment yesterday talking about how they never used to eat chicken drumsticks before and they they got some of ours and they were just amazed all you had to do is add salt and pepper too right so you say somebody they're on a on you know having to do something fancy with it right you can just roast it the other with salt and pepper and so you know we've we found that that there is you know we're seeing customers when the health Americans are not a healthy we're going to help the country and you know one of the reasons why is that you know our grandparents spent more on food than we do if that's a portion of income and that's a that's showing up it's catching up with us as a country and health care costs are skyrocketing welfare in people's welfare is you know is going down and and they are looking to exercise but also increasingly healthier foods to to help address that and in one of the things that we like to say is it's not just what you eat but but what you eat eats that matters right know especially the in the livestock side it's really important too to make sure that you know the chickens or the chicken or the turkey or the pork you know those are animals that are being raised and that are eating things that make them really healthy and that corresponds with a much healthier porkchop that takes a lot better to write so this way you don't have to use antibiotics like the commercial operation that's right yeah that's another whole different the 80% of the antibiotics used in the US are for livestock production yeah and that's just to make them grow faster and live in squalid conditions right which is terrible and also forgot to mention the the consequences on the water table of the pollution created by this operation yes yeah the runoff the Gulf and yes it's a it's absolutely terrible and so I think there's there's a lot of problems with our agricultural system and frankly a lot of the things that are being promoted like in the you know the clean meat probe you know area or hinge on certain crop productions that are going to increase that dead zone in the Gulf and and so we're not you know we're not saying we're still and we're advocating for less meat but we see me as being able to properly raise livestock as a way to to help reduce that erosion in and that runoff that's causing pollution in our waters okay I think we've addressed the tradition here in the environment issues so tell us about your line of product you know what do you offer how they start with what do you offer and then I'll move on to the next question sure so we offer it if you can grass its co-op calm you can order pasture raised chicken esterase turkey we have all different kinds of cuts and we also do for some pasture raised pork and grass-fed beef and we offer seasonally we have Leia breastfed lamb available - and all various kinds of cuts you can order what you want how you want and it's not a subscription it's a you get what you want when you want it and ship directly to your house and you know for it's all frozen frozen at the peak of freshness which is you know we do we really take that very seriously and yeah I'm just really great tasting meats that that don't take a lot of seasoning right right right another issue which I've seen with my own eyes when I went to is it white oak farms is how do you process your animals so we actually have our own processing facility that the majority of our animals go through we do work with one processor out in the on the west coast with the beef farmers in Oregon we work with but the majority all of our poultry go through a cooperatively owned processing facility and then the same thing the majority of the pork and beef do - and something we take extremely seriously for four years we actually process that you know we processed our owning our own poultry and we actually have farmers that go and spend time working the processing plant and it's a we we take animal welfare extremely seriously from start to finish there where you train the the employees that work there are good the visit farms and understand you know what you know how committed we are to trying to create in your the best environment possible for the animals and they want that to translate into the most humane and calm harvest experience possible at the at the end of the day for the animals right so we actually some rainbow that can that's control from start to finish and it's an important part of what we do you you already mentioned that earlier but just to repeat how do we know where our meat is coming from so every single package that you get from grass roots has a firm origin stamp on it that allows you to trace it back to the individual form we also have a QR code on it that you can scan and you can learn more about the whole journey of the animal from farm to fork so you can learn which farm it was raised on what day it was processed where it was processed more about the processing facility so we're very committed to transparency and giving our customers the the information they need to make an educated decision when they're finally do you do you follow any kind of certification program or I mean I understand you're not I mean some people might question that you're not USDA certified organic any other certification so our feed is all certified GMO free and then we have yeah we have not found production standards that are as rigorous as ours we are actually more rigorous than then the standards that exists out there like USDA like that the free-range for instance you can put those things and you're labeled but that just means that they're you know that can mean so many different things and so your our approach with our customers is and I think that's more important when you have a when you're sitting on the Shelf of a grocery store or trying to go through a restaurant distributor in our case we're going directly to the customer and we want to you know whatever our customers want to know we want to be able to give them access to and and so that's that's really where we publish our stands on our website we have you know open farm days where customers can come tour farms and visit our farms or even our processing facilities in fact customers come and do that before and so we take sort of a different approach that is more focused on developing a relationship with our customers and in buying them in to tell us what they want from us what do they need to see from us to feel good about to make an educated decision that yes yeah yeah yeah maybe one day it'll be one of those visitors yeah you should come up it's a great it's a great we actually have a couple of pasture poultry farms in Hillsborough so not too far away right okay now I'm not just a chef I'm also a geek so one thing that really intrigued me and this is the first time I've ever seen this it said you use the blockchain technology to track your product can you explain that in maybe non geek with okay I'll do my best so I'm not it so you know I say this a couple times and we're very committed to transparency with our customers and that's where we saw using blockchain technology as a way to help elevate that and so the way we use that is to help tell that create that journey from farm to fork that allows a customer to scan that QR code and trace that journey of the chicken from the farm to the processor to you know to their doorstep and so the blockchain technology is allowing us to do is it gives we're using an applicant partner with the company based out of the UK actually called provenance and they have developed the technology that helps show transparency in a supply chain and so we each member of that supply chain the farmer the processors the aggregator you know like they have their own user interf
ace and when a group of flock of chickens are going off to the processor then that farmer goes on and and it makes that entry saying that you know we're taking these this flock to the processor when they receive at the processor the processor is logging on to their account and confirming that what the farmer has delivered has is it matches up with what they received and and so it's what that does is each time that that's sort of that that flock is passed on through the supply chain there is a corresponding like peer to peer consensus moment where they are saying guess what happened that they're both confirming what happened here and so what what that doesn't seem like much but it's very different than what if you go into a grocery store all your your really having to trust that the front-facing brand is telling me the truth now or in some cases you're just trust in the grocery store in this situation you have each member of the supply chain creating basically making their there like transportation law of transparent to the customer and so the customer can have more detailed information that's not being input by the front facing brand but by each member of that supply chain so it really creates a different level of transparency and accountability that you don't you know like if you go and buy a an apple at the grocery store you might be lucky to find country of origin right let alone anything else same thing with a catch of pork in the case like you can see USDA number that would trace back to one of the product that the last processing facility but there is no way to go any further back than that and so we're using this technology to be able to give our customers the chance to trace all the way every single in a package of chicken breasts or a package of ground beef to trace that all the way across that chain step by step in a way that is really impressive yeah perhaps we should expand to to the listen that the production can now be altered yes right yeah what's that so what's that farmer in that processor make that data entry its conferred and it matches up then that can no longer being changed or altered by anybody and so if there's a you know a dispute between those two then then that you know like we can't hide that right and so there's a really sort of creates a different level of accountability and traceability esperen see I think it's fantastic I think the whole food the whole food environment should be on the blockchain does I mean we can buy meat with Bitcoin and not yeah we've talked about it there now yeah we actually have four international that the nonprofit we work closely with they are they do accept donations in cryptocurrency which is kind of cool so yeah you don't accept cryptocurrency yet oh when you're ready to do that yeah all right so I'll let market take over the hard questions what's the budget I mean some aid a few observation to go through and something I do want you to bring out is you know you've given us a lot of information where can people find more about you and where can they find the products so grassroots co-op so co-opt um and are you on sort of social media the you under grassroots go off on yeah very active on Instagram and Facebook especially excellent thank this grassroots with the nests and farms with the nets right yeah yeah god yeah okay just you're just making sure sure yeah peejoe oh I want to come back and address one thing right and that's the price you know Ellen mentioned it earlier that people complain that high quality meat is often comes with a high price but it seems to me the way you're working is you're cutting out most of the middlemen in the chain yeah that's right on guessing the customer actually gets much better value so I what we are doing is we have we're giving we're trying to maximize what we give back to the farmer so that farmers can make a living at a smaller scale using more it's just going to be more labor intensive production models so one of the challenges just a lot of e-commerce companies out there that are taking a more traditional appraisers right the ticking raisers that are produced in the typical razor factory and cutting out the grocery stores or the the middleman and selling that same razor for a dollar right and so what we're doing is we're going to all we're actually reconstructing the entire supply chain and so we don't have you know Dollar Shave Club is able to celebrate raiser for a caller because they are working with suppliers that are producing on the industrial scale we are not working with farmers that are producing on the industrial scale we are working with farmers that are raising flocks of you know five hundred chickens versus their you know that Ison farmer that's raising a flock of twenty five to forty thousand chickens right we process you know you know gosh one will process a couple thousand chickens in a day they will process hundreds of thousands of chickens in a day right so one of the challenges that we face on our we just have a higher cost of production because we aren't cutting we are cutting out the middleman but were also not we're being uncompromising on our standards and our commitment to the quality of the animal of quality of the environment and the the health of the product so that helped explain me a bit of that and it is kind of a trend that I see out there yeah you know cut out the middleman and it makes it cheaper and so I think it's it's cheaper than if you so one of the reasons why we haven't been able to get our product into Whole Foods is that we just hopefully just doesn't feel like they can charge enough to be able to sell this and you know and that's one reason why it's a shame because you get in a situation where they won't have the quality of the products in there if you go into a Whole Foods in the entire southwest region you'll be lucky to find anything above a gap to pork standard and what that means is it's essentially a factory raised hog and that's because they they're they're definitely built this brand around high quality but an uncompromising standards but they really do compromise a lot of standards yeah they don't want to charge too much for their products they don't want to be labeled it's all pain take anymore yeah and now that Amazon owns them it's gonna get worse that's right yeah and and so we just we've taken a philosophy that we don't want to compromise and believe that it works still we're still if they'll sell ground beef cheaper than a Snickers bar perfect yeah oh yeah yeah yeah that's the other thing you may show us that you you provide training is that training to farmers and to the general public oh we provide training to the farmers so we're helping farmers get better at raising their chickens or in some cases they may add a new enterprise to their farm or folks who are I mentioned heifer international earlier we work with them they have actually a training program where young folks that are interested in farming can come and spend time working on a farm to learn more about these production practices and then potentially become a farmer for grass roots and so we're helping upstart farmers get into this and we're helping farmers that are already existing farmers you know change their production practices improve them or maybe add new enterprise Thanks so do you also provide education for the consumer so we do through our blog and other in one of the things that we're working on for the very near future is the having a farm center where customers can come and if stay stay for a weekend stay for a couple days bring doing okay yeah EDS and see these productions in in practice and III learn more about you know the health benefits learn about cooking and something Farms is already doing something like this they they have a restaurant which used to be only for employees but since all the products are grown on the farm on the weekend they allow peop
le to come in and eat at the restaurant so they can taste a good food by the products right there the soul yeah yeah they recently started offering lodging so they have these sort of mini trailers where you know you can stay you know one two people you can have two trailers for that and these people to walk around actually I stayed there a week about two years ago and I stepped stepped out of my my lodging and it was chicken running around there was no pigs and everything I mean right around right there just as I open my door yeah I had a couple of kitty cats that adopted me I think they enjoy eating the quiche made by the by the restaurant so I fed them caged for that's great yeah so it is a great idea that allows customers to some of them the old enough for example I would say grandparents to bring their grandkids and expose them real food is about because you know I used to I used to teach in Korea new school and it was amazing how many of my students didn't have a clue where the meal was coming from and they look at the light chicken and is like oh so that's where a chicken breast is coming from right same with me you know I mean it's not something that anyone would want to see you know processing in anymore which oak forms allow me to see and then typically they don't show that customers unless they've really asked for it but it you know for any chef out there it should be required you know them to actually see how the food is so to their customers is handle them processed yeah absolutely super I mean just a sort of a less fuel question how do you guarantee sort of the GMO mono GMO in your new fish so that is going through a certifying body in that situation so and we we work closely with our feed mill that has direct relationships with the farmers that they're sourcing their their feeds from and so it's a section midnight group of farmers in southern Missouri so it's pretty close you know it's not like it's coming from international it is a fairly local to us but we are in that case relying on the certifying body then we do we do lots of different feed tests to make sure that we're getting is what we think we're getting you know speaking of which I understand that you only use American suppliers right no products from China from or whatever yes and that is that is a great support American providers well farmers are farmers farmers that provide food for your animals yeah yeah yeah everything to me all of our farmers are based in the u.s. they're all and all the the feed that we use concern you know from the Midwest and so yes we're 100% us-based that's great that's great you support local food system yeah yeah that's right so how do you give us a lot of information as I said is there anything that we should have asked and didn't know I think yeah yeah you went through it all pretty much so it was a great conversation and I really enjoyed it excellent Allan I think it's time to do the close it's time for my 20 close right yes so here we go thank you again the Cody for being in the locale paleo show and as we say in Texas about was Ontario here that everywhere in Texas everywhere .

Video Description:

http://lowcarbpaleoshow.com/low-carb-paleo-show-136-cody-hopkins-grass-roots-farmers-cooperative-interview/
Hosts: Alain Braux and Mark Moxom interview Cody Hopkins
Cody Hopkins has spent more than 12 years developing a vertically integrated sustainable livestock farm. He began farming in Arkansas, with no prior experience, in 2006, soon after launching Falling Sky Farm. He and his wife Andrea Tody founded Grass Roots Farmers’ Cooperative in 2014, with Falling Sky Farm as one of the founding farms. Since then, the cooperative has brought in more than 20 farms across the U.S., all with the common objective of sustainable livestock farming.
https://youtu.be/tMWKZSHtzQA
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November 19, 2020 Tags : health , keto , LCHF , low carb , low carb recipe , lowcarb magazine , natural food , organic , Paleo , Paleo Diet , paleo recipe , Video , weightloss

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