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I’ve read this twice, I read the website. I’m still not sure what this actually is. But I will follow and see if anything comes of it. I’m not sure if I’m just not getting it or there is some cognitive dissonance. “Food should be free”, “Food is a human right”, “Farming-as-a-service” has my hackles up. Some combination of buzzwords and ideological statements. But I need to really understand what you’re trying to be. I’m generally a fan of regenerative agriculture in all its names. 👀

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Stalk Market 1y ago

Thanks for sharing.

The deep intention is to focus back on the soil instead of solely on the end-product.

That by reframing it to pay for the service of ecological management rather than just for the production of the food as a product, we can get back to the root cause of so many issues we see within the micro and macro food systems.

And that the idea of it all being a play on the stock market (quite an extractive system) and our goal is to put money directly into farmer's pockets so they can regenerate the land. And the food is a helpful by-product of regen ag.

But deeply appreciate any and all feedback on the concept! It's meant to push buttons and get us talking about soil, food, and community :)

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Discussion

DefiantDandelion 1y ago

So from the content I have seen so far it sounds like I pay someone to improve their soil with regenerative agriculture, “here is my $100 or equivalent in BTC to increase the organic matter in your soil from 3% to 4%.” This pays the farmer to do the service of improving their soil with rotational grazing. (Purchase sheep, and pay labor to move the sheep, fence, etc) I get an ownership claim to a percentage of the surplus? How real is the claim Or is this marketing?. (lamb from rotational grazing).

Is this a reframing of what is actually like a co-op CSA for marketing purposes. Or are their really qualitative differences. Like the measurement metrics are actually on the soil quality with the surplus food being unmeasured and uncertain.

If it is how I have described it, I could see it working in the same way that people would pay to have trees planted on their behalf in a non profit donation kind of way. But hard to imagine real food showing up on my table when I need it. It feels like a perishable food equivalent of the tote bag gift for donating to a cause.

I’m sure if there was firm predictable examples it would make more sense to me. And I personally love the idea of regenerative agriculture CSAs. If that’s what this is I’m all for it, and apologies for the questions. You’ve said some things about the commodification of food that I would need to think about more if it’s really always exploitive of the soil if you sell the food as opposed to “giving it away” I get the idea that you improve what you measure, and if soil quality isn’t what you are explicitly buying then you aren’t going to get soil quality. If I’m buying a steak I will get the steak. But I want a steak in a visceral, I got to eat kind of way. I’m glad the farmers soil quality is increasing, I want to buy food from that kind of farmer, but I don’t want to buy soil improvement in the same kind of way.

Am I near the mark or am I confused on how it works.

🙏😅

Stalk Market 1y ago

SUCH good feedback and reflections!!

Very frankly, the whole concept and business is new! Really open to all ideas on how best to structure it quantatively.

As of right now, we act as the operations arm for a number of farms out here in Boulder County. Helping to connect the "consumers" (a word we don't really like, so we call them Soil Supporters") with farmers (or "Soil Stewards") to help with the marketing, distribution, and financial movement.

We work with a compost company out here called Compost Colorado, and they have members (individuals and organization) who drop their food waste off with them which is then picked up and brought back to the farms. By layering in the food pickup/drop off with this business we can do distribution at a very low cost since we're already going to farms, houses, and stores.

As for the shares, we don't really structure in terms of equity. One day we'd love for carbon tracking tech to actually be good enough to have that data be the way we determine regen ag effectiveness but it's not quite there yet. So right now we are incubating this entire model and idea through Yellow Barn Farm (the demo site and biz incubator) and Drylanda Agroecology Research (DAR, a non-profit that does holistic land mgmt at Yellow Barn and other sites).

If DAR knows their entire budgetary needs to manage the 80 acres at YBF, we can effectively know what their ops cost is to produce X lbs of meat, veg, eggs, etc (except that eventually we really want to move away from lbs since it's not a very good way to gauge value). That translates to how many "shares" we can offer to the community at a specific rate.

So let's say 150 people pay $200/m or $2k year. That's $300k that can help fund DAR's ops cost and YBF's infrastructure upgrades. The food is then just a by-product of the "tools of the trade" of DAR's regen ag process and because their costs were covered by the service fee the members paid, the members then receive the "dividend" of food once that comes available.

I know it's a lot but super appreciate the thoughtful response and feedback. We know it's a total paradigm shift so any and all thoughts are helpful on how to tailor and simplify the message 😄