Themes explored in this section:
- What role does technology play in the regenerative movement?
- How do you foster engagement between the executive team and the farms and ensure that corporate decision-makers are meaningfully embedded in their supply system?
- How do you respond to farmers and retailers who doubt the business case for transitioning to regenerative farming & animal husbandry?
We’re huge believers that this regenerative movement needed to happen 10 or 20 years ago. We’re way behind the ball already and we need to put these kinds of products into people’s fridges. But we really felt like we needed to figure out how to bring some scale to this.
One of the most important things we did is partner with Purdue farms back in 2019. That gave us a lot of leverage when it came to scale–the hatchery, the transportation, the harvesting, the packaging, and the capital to be able to bring down our costs. We’re still not going to be the cheapest on the shelf by far, but it’s also not a $40 whole chicken, is really tough for people.
We can’t compete with the great big guys on cost and very honestly, everybody is now selling organic, natural type items, and it’s not their entry price point items, but it’s on their shelves. Somebody wants to go shop for organic or natural items? They can go to Walmart and buy them. So we have to continually look for what is the next thing, what can be new or exciting to continue to give us an edge on sustainability.
