Today is August 4th 2015. My name is Christine Navarro M interviewing for
the Arizona State University Dinner 2040 archive. I'm interviewing Mr
Barba Clinton at his home in period of Arizona. Keep trying to say Texas.
Um, good morning. Hi, how are you? Good. How are you, sir? Good. Excellent
, good. Could you tell me a little bit about, um kind of your background
and, and how you came to this point? Well, that's a fairly long story. But
, uh I guess it all started my fascination with growing, started when I
was probably three or four years old and my grandmother took some squash
seeds and put them between two wet paper towels on a plate. Uh, and we
kept them moist for four or five or six days. And I was just fascinated
when they germinated and started sprouting and growing roots and growing
coal Eden type leaves. And that really started my love and curiosity about
growing, born and raised in Tucson, went to school uh at the University of
Arizona and, and got a degree in pharmacy. And when I was going to school
, I had a lot of part time jobs one of them was working for the USDA and
the B research laboratory down there uh where I spent several, two or
three years
being a information gatherer, a grunt basically uh to the phd researchers
at doing scientific research projects on honey bees and fell in love with
the honey bee at that point in time and have had bees pretty much ever
since um that experience. And then also another part-time job was to work
in a greenhouse in the pharmacognosy laboratory, which pharmacognosy is
the study of, of plants and drugs derived from plants that pretty much is
almost a dead science now because everything is synthesized, everything is
manipulated in the laboratory. And there are very, very few drugs that are
where we grow plants and we extract drugs out of them. They're all
synthesized now. So I don't think they even teach that in pharmacy school
today. I see no evidence of it, but it's an interesting science and it's
very interesting from the perspective that that's where our modern
medicines all originated was from plants. Um After that, I went to work um
uh uh doing continuing education uh for the University of Arizona College
of Pharmacy for a year, traveled the state and did a lot of continuing
education programs for pharmacists. Then took a job uh at Saint Joseph's
Hospital in Phoenix Arizona and was there about 20 years before I started
doing all kinds of other crazy things. Um medical electronics and medical
supply businesses and that type of thing. But all through this, we had
property, our first home was on two acres. The next one was on 10 and now
we're on 25 and we farm a total of 93 acres, all certified organic. So
through all that, we have always been growing, we've always been,
our first venture was an internet marketing in the very early days. And we
sold honey dates and citrus online. And actually before it was even online
, it was by printed catalog and we would ship all over the country via UPS
those things that we could ship. Uh that really started it. And that was
about 30 some odd years ago, uh that we actually started a business which
, which we called mclendon Select uh at that time. And um it's evolved to
where now it's a, um I would call it a medium size family business. My son
is involved, of course, my wife is involved, my daughter-in-law, my
grandson and we have about 20 other employees at this point in time. So
I'm gonna go back just a little bit for the jobs that you had during
college and ask you how those jobs kind of help form, um or help fuel that
passion with gardening and growing. Well, going to going to pharmacy
school. Um of course, we had a lot of, a lot of biology, a lot of
chemistry. Um It was very science based and I discovered that while I was
doing all this growing. Um And especially after I got out of college, that
I could use that knowledge to help me grow food. I've never been into
landscaping. I've never been into um uh planting something for beauty. Uh
I've always been into planting something that would give us something to
eat. So instead of planting a, a mesquite tree, I'd rather plant a citrus
tree and learned our first plantings of fruit trees were citrus trees. Uh
10 citrus trees back in about 1970
those trees are still alive and still producing today. Um So let me, let
me go a little bit further back as well. Tell me about, you mentioned your
grandmother and the seeds that she grew was, did she have a garden when
she was young? Did you, would you remember working in that garden with her
? She always had a garden, always grew, um always grew a few little things
, whatever she could in the, in the hard desert soil. And uh I can still
remember digging for her and finding Kichi and hard underpant and uh using
a pick and a shovel. And I can still remember doing that, but she always
had uh things growing. Um She was a nurse and she worked for a private uh
like a private duty nurse and worked for a very wealthy lady who actually
lived at Saint Mary's Hospital in Tucson. She was a permanent resident um
, her name was Sadie Danzinger. And from the Dancing or Oil Company of the
, uh, uh, the 1st 50 years of the, of like for about 1930 to 1940. And she
, there was a very wealthy family and this lady was sick all the time. And
so she lives at the hospital. But, but my grandmother always had a big
garden for her outside of the hospital. And, uh, she would take this lady
Sadie and, uh, take her out and, and she would be working with the, the
garden and the flowers. It was mostly flowers that she liked. And that was
her whole pleasure in life at that point in time was gardening and flowers
that she grew on the hospital grounds. And what is it? Do you think that
that on to you? Um, just the, the, the miracle of life, the absolute
fascination with taking a seed and nurturing that seed until it grows into
something that produces something to eat. Um, I've always been a good
eater. I've always loved great food. Um, I guess in the early days before
I really got into this business, you could call me a foodie. We used to go
to, um, uh, we used to go to California a lot, which was really the center
of the universe then and probably still is for uh, new food concepts and
food and especially great restaurants, great chefs, uh went to the masters
of food and my wife and I went to the masters of food and wine, like 10
years in a row and, uh, where they brought great chefs in from all over
the world, um, and cooked dishes from all over the world. And it was, uh,
it's always been, food's always been very important to me. So when you tie
that magic of the germinating seed into producing something that's so much
better than you can get in a grocery store out of a can or a jar or a
bottle or out of the freezer. Um That's always just been a fascination to
me. So I in this business, we've always strived to be able to be the best
we can be, but we've never been happy um with uh where we are, we're
always trying to do it better. And my son Sean, who joined me in the
business about six years ago, uh takes that to even a further level than I
do. Um He's a perfectionist and he, he sometimes drives me crazy doing
that, but he's a perfectionist. And so he is very much into quality and
improving what we do. We're always trying new varieties of vegetables.
We're always looking for something that can grow in this harsh climate and
produce good product. Um Our work is never done. We're never satisfied and
we're never uh just gonna be status quo. So let's talk a little bit about
your transition into um making the P and select um the pre um certified
organic and how you, you left pharmacy and started um working on this ben
probably, um the start of this business that goes back to my wife Marsha.
We always had a garden from our first home on two acres. We always had a
big garden and we always grew everything that we could grow. Um, sometimes
with success and sometimes with failure, um, we still have failure for
sure. Um It's, it's a difficult, difficult job. It's the most challenging
job I've ever had uh to be able to do what we do in given climate and
mother nature and everything else. Um And uh
I've lost track of where I was going with. This, started the business. So
as we had these gardens, um I started taking food that we grew to work and
I had a company, then I left the hospital, had a company called uh uh PC I
Medical and we had it when I sold that company, we had about 60 employees.
And so I would take vegetables that we couldn't use because we were
growing too many and I would take them to work and give them to the
employees and employees just loved it because several days a week, there'd
be a, I would be out of a shelf and I would put all kinds of things on
that shelf and they could just help themselves to it. Um Then we moved, um
we, the, the, we started getting rid of. We had, in the early days we had
horses and we had cattle and we got rid of those. Um, there's no more
livestock on the place and, uh, expanded our growing areas continually and
we growing way more than what I could give away. So, my wife one day went
to, um, a, a very old shopping center in central Phoenix called Town and
Country. Uh, it's located at 20th Street in Kel back. And they've had,
they did have a farmer's market, the farmer's markets now closed, but they
did have a farmer's market that was 20 or 25 years old then with a lot of
history behind it and a lot of, of small farmers that would go and sell
their, their products there. So she went and talked to them and she told
me that she was going to do that and she said, you've got to, we've got to
do something with all this and it's a shame to waste it. So she drove and
talked to the management and said that I would be there the next week with
a table and we started out with a table of citrus, um, set up a table of
citrus and we had two chairs that we would sit behind and people would
come by and they would buy our citrus and, and, um, so that's where really
our farmer's market part of the food cycle began. Then we had some
restaurants chefs that came by uh that shopped at farmer's market and they
started looking at our produce and our fruit and saying this is really
nice stuff. Um I would like to use that in my restaurant. So there's two
chefs, one in particular uh that really started it. And his name is Chris
Bianco and Chris Bianco has four restaurants now and is very well known.
He's a James Beard award-winning chef, uh very well known in this area.
He has Pizzeria Bianco, which was his first pane Bianco, his second
Italian restaurant. And he also has a restaurant in Tucson called Pizzeria
Bianco in Tucson. And he is like the pioneer of using local food, locally
produced food, whether it be poultry or dairy or meat or vegetables or
fruit. He, I would have to say that probably 95% of everything he uses is
locally produced. So he has like been, I don't know if you know who Alice
Waters is or not, but you'll hear that name as you get into this Alice
Waters is really the mother of this kind of movement, the local food
movement. And she started up in Berkeley, California and she's written a
book, um and she has a restaurant there and she's anyone in the local food
movement uh knows who Alice Waters is, but he would be kind of the Alice
Waters of, of Phoenix. And why was it important for him to use local food
in, in his restaurant. Um, number one, he just really believed that using
local products would support the economy, would give him fresher products
more flavorful products that he could cook better food with local food,
local ingredients and has stuck to that ever since. So it's just a total
commitment from his end product that goes on the plate to supporting the
local economy with his dollars. And he's been very important to this, this
movement, But he came to our farmer's market and then I grew to two tables
and then three tables. And when we started out, I would sit in a chair and
wait for someone to come buy something. And our current markets, we are
the largest farmer's market vendor. Um I would have to say probably larger
than any, any single vendor in California, but certainly the largest in
Arizona um to the degree that we now have when we set up a market, we have
eight cashiers
and lines four and five deep behind every cashier, sometimes 10 and 20
deep in old town, Scottsdale and there's eight cashiers kind of, you can
go to the grocery, a big grocery store today and you might not find eight.
You probably won't find eight cashiers that are even open, but usually
two or three. But we run eight cashiers full steam ahead for about five or
six hours during one of our markets. And we've grown from sitting in a
chair to that, that level. Let's talk about that growth and the kind of
the pains and the, and the joys of growing that, that large. Um,
there's always been joy behind it because I, at, at my age I wouldn't do
it if I didn't really enjoy it. But on the other hand I told you it was
the most challenging thing I've ever done. And I'm still challenged by it
on a daily basis.
And the, the pains are many from insects to hot weather to cold weather
too that can freeze here. We've had 14 degree days. It froze all the
citrus trees and all the fruit on them. It happens about every five or six
years and we've had days that everything just fries in the heat when it's
116 or 17 degrees or whatever. So those are the challenges, weeds,
challenge bugs, uh, the environment in general, um, that just put us to
the test every day of the week. And we're always trying to learn something
more to improve what we do and to assure the health and vigor of the
plants that we manage and plant. So, tell me you have your, um, a
certified organic farm, correct? Can you tell me about that process and
why that was important to you?
About 2000 and
about the year 2000. Um, I could look around and see as I looked at the
whole food,
the whole, how do I say the whole food industry at least in the local area
here of Phoenix, which is really all I have ever known about and about
people and what they were eating, what they were buying, what they wanted
to. Um, what, what, what they were interested in. Um, I started looking at
the health outcomes of eating, um, organic versus eating conventionally
grown that all has pesticide residues on it among other chemicals coming
from the fertilizer that they fed it with to the sprays they put on it for
pesticides, et cetera. And also looking at the cancer rates that seem to
be increasing
among our community. And is that gonna interfere with you?
Testing? 123? Is that ok? Ok. Ok. I told him because he won't be there
very long. So I looked at the health benefits of eating healthy and
realizing that I myself and our family had not been eating as healthy as
we could have. Uh, in our young years, we always ate good food. Marsha is
an excellent cook and having gardens and produce all the time. We always,
I'm sure we ate more healthy than the average family, but not to the
degree that we eat today healthy. And um, I looked at that whole thing and
said I need to convert this farm to organic and there's typically that
takes three years
because you have to start farming it organically for three years in a
transitional period. And you have to, um, uh, go through that weight and
you have to register the, the ground in the transitional period and then
they come and inspect you et cetera, et cetera. But it took me five years
because um I was busy and it was a learning process. There was no one
there to help me today. There's lots of tools to help young farmers uh to
get certified. We didn't have that. And I had to read the National Organic
Act, I had to ask a million questions of other growers. Um and spent a lot
of time in California talking to growers, et cetera. So I finally figured
out exactly what I need to do. So it took me five years to get certified
instead of three. So we became certified in about 2005 toward the end of
2005. And so now we've been over 10 years certified and um we now have
about
three years ago, four years ago, we entered into agreement an agreement
with the Cancer treatment Centers of America at Litchfield Road and I 10,
um who uh it's a, it's a ultramodern hospital. And um that whole story
started when the chef called me and wanted to buy organic produce. And I
told him I wasn't taking any new customers and I told him no, several
times. And finally, finally, he said, I'm not gonna give up, would you
come out here? And I'd like to show you what we do here in this hospital
and of course, me being spending a good part of my life in a very big
hospital. Um when it came to food, I wanted to get out of there to eat
lunch. I didn't want to eat lunch in the hospital. So I did everything I
could to avoid eating in the hospital. So here I've got a chef asking me,
you know, sell your produce to me so we can feed it to our patients and
our employees. And I'm going um II, I couldn't connect with that, couldn't
connect with that concept. Finally, I went out there, took a tour and I
was so impressed with what they do and with the people and, and how they
treat their patients and their, their treatment regimens and how they
approach their treatment from every facet, from holistic to chiropractic
to naturopathic, to chemotherapy, to surgery, to radiation, every mode
modality that they can use, they use to treat and try to win the fight
against cancer. I was so impressed with that and the people that I took
them on as a customer and I personally started delivering to them and then
noticing that there was farming all around that hospital and I started
asking a question. Well, apparently the hospital bought like 200 acres and
they took 25 and built the hospital and then they leased the other 175
acres to conventional farmer farmers that were growing just conventional
crops like alfalfa and cotton and, and uh uh wheat, that kind of thing. So
one day, the chef who is a CIA train chef with an Italian background, uh
we were talking and we both kind of cooked up the idea that what if we,
what if I leased some ground and I started growing uh organic produce
there uh And they would have access to it and they could go out and
harvest whatever they want and take it into the kitchen and prepare it
that day and feed the patients uh wholesome organic food that's grown
right in the right behind the hospital. And we, we uh presented that uh
Frank um Frank Caputo is his name, the CIA trained chef who's head of
their culinary program. He presented at the Board of directors and uh
board of directors says, uh we'd be interested in that uh get us some cost.
So I went to work and I designed a dream irrigation system with a big
multimillion gallon lagoon of a big pump so that I could drip, irrigate
everything to save water. And uh I had the, the land had been abused by
tenant farmers for decades uh in very, very poor condition. Uh We had to
laser level, it had to bring in all kinds of fill to make it level, um did
a lot of work. And so then we put the pencil to this thing and it was um
quite frankly, it was pretty close to a million dollars. And I said, well
, that's, there goes that dream.
Um, that's really nice, but there's no way they're ever gonna approve a
million dollars. No way. And they took it to the National Board of
Directors and
unbelievably they approved it and they spent that money and they got it
ready for us to farm. Uh, we did a lot of the work, not a lot of it. We
did some of the work ourselves. We did all of the piping and plumbing and
everything to get the water all over the place. And so now we farm uh uh
68 6, 63 acres and it's all certified now, 6365 somewhere in there. So the
1st 25 that we farm, we had to go through a three year wait period. So it
was transitional, but we farmed it just as if it was organic and we sold
it as transitional. Uh The hospital used it and it was very nice product
and it was working out well. And I started looking at another 40 acres
that hadn't had any water to it or farm for at least 15 years. Um And we,
um I came up with the idea that I could figure out how to get water to it
from the system that they'd already built. I could pipe water down to it.
And uh I, we put that through as an idea and leased, we now lease that 40
acres. So we now got a total of about 65 acres out there. Uh That's all,
now all certified that 40 acres went organic within just a few months.
There's a, there's, this is a picture. Here's the hospital here.
Sure. Go ahead.
You want to get on top of it though?
No, no, you don't want that. I want us.
Ok. Oh, you do you mind being in the pictures? Do you mind being here?
That would be perfect. Grab it.
Ok. Thank you.
Anyway, this is the 25 acres here. This is in wheat right here. This is
the 25 acres. This is a lagoon and the pumping station and then this is
the 40 acres here that um we recently started farming and because it
hadn't been farmed for 15 years, it could be certified organic right away
because there had been no chemicals. No, all the weed control was done by
mechanical means disc in the weeds and stuff. So this you can see where we
have all these different vegetables planted. Uh This is just before we
planted spring corn, they were just Sean Sean does all the tractor work
here. Now, this is pretty much vacant and we're planting up here and this
is the hospital. This is the back door to the hospital. The kitchen staff
comes out here, harvest in the morning, takes it back washes it and
literally it's going from farm to plates um within hours and they feed,
they also buy organic poultry, organic meat. They buy 90 plus percent of
everything that they serve is organic because food is one of their
treatment modalities.
So, food and the quality of that food and the healthiness of that food is
very important to them because there's a lot of evidence that a lot of
these chemicals that we're exposed to and we live in a sea of chemicals,
we can't avoid it, but a lot of those chemicals are now being tied to
different forms of cancer. Um, some of it is anecdotal. Some of it is
scientific and um, but it was enough to impress me in 2000 that I needed
to make this change. And so this whole thing has evolved to where now it
is really a pretty big operation
and all dedicated to clean wholesome fresh local food. Did you ever
envision that this would be possible or feasible or even happen? I did
when I, when I started delivering and this was all this was vacant here.
This was in weed at the time and I would drive in here come I 10. This is
I 10 here. I would drive down Litchfield Road and take the delivery truck
and back into their dock and I couldn't help but go through and, and look
as I drove up and down here at all this agricultural ground. Meantime, we
were running out of room 25 acres here, most of its citrus and I'm trying
to grow vegetables and I didn't have enough room. So it's like uh it was
like a perfect, the, the perfect relationship. Um It's probably an example
of, of a true symbiotic relationship where
we benefit and they benefit all parties are benefiting plus the community.
And there is really no downside or no negative to this at all. Even from
a property tax perspective, this 40 acres was vacant in its zone
commercial and they were paying $85,000 a year in property taxes, which
are now $4000 a year because it's now in agriculture. So everybody wins in
this, in this relationship and it's been, it's been a wonderful
relationship. Now, how do you determine what crops are grown and how, how
does that get made? Well, um my son and I make all those determinations. I
also have a young lady who has a degree in horticulture and uh uh her name
is Laura. Um She manages all the seed, manages all the records and we look
at what we've done in the past for years as to timing whole thing about
growing in the desert is all about timing when you plant and you can plant
certain things at the wrong time of the year. And most people of backyard
gardens don't have a clue. They're trying to plant winter stuff in the
summer and summer stuff in the winter and they fail. So the key thing here
is, when do you make that commitment and that investment? And when do you
plant? And uh the three of us make those decisions. So, right now, we are
still planting summer things today out there. Um He's got, my son's got a
crew of about seven or eight people out there today and he's planting
cucumbers and squash and okra which will mature. Um When we start our
farmers markets the first week of October, uh, we'll start harvesting the
things that he's planting today. So you've got to be 60 to 90 to 100 and
20 days ahead of this thing in your planning, which can be tricky. But two
years of experience, we kind of know when we need to do that and we go
back to the previous year's records and say, oh, this didn't work. Uh, we
messed up on that one and, uh, but this did work. We try to go with the
things that work. What is it like for these employees at this hospital to
come out, harvest their, the food and go, I mean, what is that experience
in watching that that need to come out in their chef uniforms? And they've
got their bins and their knives and their cutters and whatever they need.
And, and, uh, they have their own little, uh, John Deere Gator that they
drive, uh, with a little bed in the back of it and they pile all the stuff
on there and immediately take it in, there's a wash station, uh located uh
to the rear here that they wash all the soil off before it goes in the
kitchen and then they further clean it and prep it uh in the kitchen. And
, uh, they enjoy that. Uh, they don't enjoy it so much in these hot summer
months and they try to do it early in the morning. But, you know, it's, it
, it's a tough job. Harvesting is a big part of this job and we have some
very dedicated people that make it happen. Um But it's not an easy job at
all. And what, why is it beneficial for you to expand um into the 40 into
the other additional 40 acres? What did you see as a potential potential
to go ahead and stop it for a second? So, can you tell me a little bit
about, I asked you about the crops and tell me um a little bit about what
the business that is behind farming, especially organic and what that is
the business that's, our business is divided into two sections, farmers
market, which we basically do three very large farmers markets. Um We do
uh a market called Uptown at Central and Bethany uh on Saturdays year
round, uh on Wednesdays, that same market uh starts in October and goes
through the end of June. Uh Then we do old town Scottsdale,
old town, Scottsdale is the very, our largest market and it starts up
usually the third week of October and goes into mid May. Uh That's about
half of our business.
The other half of our business are restaurants. So that all started when
one chef Chris Bianco came and looked at her stuff and then another chef,
her name is Krier, uh uh Christa Robertson from Rancho Pino who is a real
champion also of, of local food. Um and we've never advertised, we have no
sales people but it's just word of mouth. And so one chef talks to another
chef and they say, where do you, where do you get this from? And a lot of
chefs will eat in other restaurants to see what's going on and where does
this come from? And our business has grown to where we now do more than 70
restaurants. Uh We have one in Winslow, Arizona, five in Flagstaff,
four in Sedona, five in Sedona,
45 in Tucson. And the balance of that 70 which would be probably 6055 or
60 are in the Phoenix Scottsdale area. And so we have, we have four
delivery trucks, refrigerator delivery trucks that, um deliver. We pick it
immediately goes into a coal truck, bring it if it's at this farm at the
Hope we call this Hope Springs farm at the cancer treatment Center of
America Hope Springs Farm. So we take a refrigerated truck out there and
every bin that we harvest goes into that cold truck right away. We're kind
of cold freaks because I see an awful lot of small farmers that carried
around in pickup trucks or vans or cars or whatever unrefrigerated and it
just ruins. They can be the, have the best produce in the whole world.
They're going to it. So we have very large, uh, walk in cooling
facilities here. So it goes into a refrigerated truck. It comes here, it's
washed and packed in an ultra clean room called our Processing room and um
, then packaged back into the coolers and it goes delivered on a
refrigerator truck to our customers. And that's part of the reasons why
we've been so successful is because typically our produce and our fruit is
way better than what the produce companies sell them. Did you ever imagine
? I mean, I don't know if people realize what it takes to get from the
farm to the table. I mean, did you did the business skills that you're
using? I mean, did you, well, the business skills that, that I'm using are
business skills that I developed over a whole lifetime of being in
different, several different businesses, not only just being a pharmacist
and running. I left Saint Joe's as a Director of pharmacy in 85 but then I
had several successful businesses and I will tell you I had a two or three
that were not successful. Um And uh so my life has not been full of
success. Uh I've had unsuccessful businesses also. But I've learned from
those. So the business skills that I've learned through a lifetime of
doing a lot of different things we use here on a daily basis. And, and the
main thing, our main motto is that our customers are the most important
thing to us, whether it be farmers markets or chef customers. Um Our
quality is never good enough and our um are commitment to doing things
better and more efficiently. And, and in that case, my son has taken over
and this is a very high tech business behind all the dirt and the tractors.
Uh He has two tractors. I can't even drive because there's, there's so
much technology in them GPS sub inch accuracy. He can point it in a
direction and a mile later, it'll be within less than an inch of straight
where it started. And the cabs of his tractors look like, look like a
cockpit of a 747. Um II I can drive, I can move them from point A to point
B but I can't, I can't do anything with them anymore. And so, and then we
have, uh we've been featured uh if you go to the Apple uh website and you
, you, there's a place on that website where you can see client profiles.
Uh Apple did a well, it took them four days to film it but did a story on
how we use their technology in our business. And So um you, you name the
technology Sean has, has developed that and all the software for the
business has been done just for us, for our business. Um Everything from
label printing to scanning, barcode scanning has now been introduced. Um
It just, there's a lot of technology behind our success, but it still goes
back to one thing and that's the soil and the soil is the most important
thing in this business and taking care of that soil. So when we took over
this ground, which had been totally neglected for decades, it has been a
continual building that soil process and will never be done. But I look at
the soils on this farm and some of the first ones that I started with that
are now 20 years of adding organic matter and compost and things like hums
and natural chicken type manure fertilizers and all natural things. These
soils are like light years better than what we started. I can, you can
just see it, you can see what's growing in it. We have the best soils here
and we're working on the soils out there to improve them, but it all goes
back to the soil. That's where everything starts. And so if we take care
of that soil, we just plant seed and add water. I'm sure it's not that
simple but not, not quite but, but literally, we don't try to uh we don't
try to uh uh correct deficiencies in the soil after the plant germinates,
we tried to do everything in that soil preplant before. So how do you
convince um you mentioned the local food movement and how do you show
other farmers that growing wheat or growing those types of crops? Um While
they get subsidies is may be important to them, there's other
opportunities to grow organic. How do you, I mean, that's a hard argument.
Uh It is, but it's an argument that um we, I don't try to do that. They
are most of them so set in their ways that they're not going to give that
up and they have no interest in what we're doing. They look at us as kind
of like like an aberration. Um just kind of something going off to the
side, but they don't see what is happening with the food revolution. They
don't see uh because they don't interface direct with the consumer. They
sell to a broker who sells to a wholesaler who sells to somebody else.
They don't have the direct contact with their customers that we do. We've
got, I, I do the farmers markets, I talk to the people myself and that's
really important to our success. That's why they're the biggest farmers'
markets that there are um I in this area because they have come to trust
us. They want, they ask questions, they all have gardens, they ask me
questions. I'm happy to help them. And um uh it's that that custom
interface plus the interface we have with the chefs that we talk to them.
Most of our chefs we talk to them at least weekly. And if we don't talk
to them, we're emailing and communicating. But we have a very close
relationship with the, with the in person that's using that product. And
your big farmers don't have that. They, they never see who uses that flour
made from that wheat. Um They never see the, the customer buying the milk
that they grew the hay for the cows for that kind of thing. They're far
removed from that. And whereas we're front line with that. And so I'm not
sure they're really fully aware of this tremendous. Um uh What would I,
what I call it a tremendous uh revolution in food where people want to
know where their food comes from. They want it clean, they want it healthy
, they want organic, they want local, want all those things. And um that
is that market is exploding, increasing every day. And that's been
responsible for our growth from starting with just a small area on a 25
acre farm to where we're now at 90 almost 100 acres of organic growing.
And, and uh I see that and I talk to people every day and I understand
that uh but it's really getting important to them and yet there's a huge
part of the population that is still not important to that. You see at the
fast food places, uh at drive ins, uh, at 456 and seven o'clock at night.
And they're stopping at mcdonald's and taking food home to their families
or whatever, fast food. I'm not gonna pick on mcdonald's but any of the
fast food places they're lined up and they're buying family meals, you
know, at KFC, et cetera, et cetera. And so there's huge potential for
education, a huge potential for growth uh in this marketplace of what we
call healthy food. And it's being fought by the big ag, big chemical
companies in a very big way. Uh The House of Representatives, even after
hundreds of thousands of calls pass the Dark Act, it hasn't gone to
Congress or to Senate yet. Senates working on their own version. But uh
the food industry spent over $50 million lobbying to get this passed. And
basically they want to keep any, any individual state from requiring GMO
labeling.
So there are a couple of states, Vermont, New Hampshire, I think
California tried it and big ag came in there with millions and the voters
did not approve it because it would be a real problem for them. If they
had to tell people everything that was GMO, people would even increasingly
turn away from that
even though. And I will say this, that um there's a lot of anecdotal
evidence that GMO may be harmful. There's no hard scientific evidence at
this point in time. But over the long term, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years,
we don't know what this modification of these genes is going to do to us
when we consume. We just don't know that. And so me from a very strong
drug background in my lifetime, I've seen
dozens of drugs that were approved by the FDA as being safe and effective.
And five years later or 10 years later, they're pulled off the market,
Thalidomide and, and birth defects. There's a whole list of drugs that
were approved as thought to be safe. And then we found out that they're
not and then they got removed from the market. So I use that as an analogy
to GMO.
There are a lot of, there's a lot of misinformation on the internet about
GMO, about everything and a lot of people they think if they see it on the
internet or someone writes it that it's the truth. And I come from a real
strong science background and you gotta prove it to me. Uh I'm, I'm an
organic grower. We don't do anything GMO. I'm against GMO because I
frankly don't know what the long term effects of eating that food are
going to be. Can you tell me a little bit about this revolution? Do you
call it the food revolution? How you've seen it change and evolve over
time since? Well, we, what we see is there's, there's a lot more local
food being produced. Um There's a lot more small growers coming into this
market to supply it. Um The demand right now is pretty much greater than
the supply. Um And I think that that's gonna continue and I think that
will spawn more and more people entering the production of local clean
food, uh which is really a good thing and um it's come a long way, people
underestimate this rapidity or the speed of its growth right now, they
don't fully understand what's happening and how fast it's happening. And I
think they're starting to understand that big ag and big chemical don't
want any part of it because it's going to hurt their sales and, and then
there's companies like Monsanto that feel that they can control the food
supply of the world. They literally can be the most powerful company in
the world and that's what they're trying to do. It's pretty simple. So can
you tell me a little bit also, let's talk a little bit about the policy
aspect. And do you get involved in that or do you in the, in the policy
aspect of food policy, you mentioned like the government regulations and
everything. Do you think there needs to be more, less regulation in the
industry itself?
Um I think that from uh health and, and food safety, uh we need more. Um
There's always outbreaks of this outbreaks of that and those can be
prevented um from
putting in regulations that, that remove people's right. Of choice like
GMO, labeling. I think people should have the, be able to make, have
enough information to make the choice. I'm not telling them they shouldn't
eat GMO. I'm not telling them they should, I'm saying they should be able
to make their own decision and we do not give them the tools to do that.
With one exception. If they buy organic, certified, organic, they are
assured there's no GMO. OK. So that's one way to go about it, no matter
what kind of laws they want to pass, they can get around that by saying
I'm only going to buy organic, but that's hard to do for everything. You
can't be 100% organic maybe someday. And there are a lot of people say
that we could never produce enough to feed the planet that way, but
there's a lot of evidence coming forth now that we can feed, feed the
people of this earth and do it without all the chemicals and without all
the genetic modified organisms. So tell me what, um, aspect do you enjoy
most about farming and, and the interaction with the people. What is your
, the favorite part of, of what you do? Um,
I guess I kind of enjoy all of it. Uh I really, I really enjoy, you know,
uh, managing
the plants once they, once they germinate. Um, I really enjoy being
involved in that management and everything from, from watering to
determining when it's time to harvest when it's time to do it in, put it
back into the ground, the compost. I enjoy that, but I enjoy the people.
Uh, it's the people, our customers, whether they be chefs or, or uh
farmers market customers. I've always enjoyed the farmer's market and the
customers because I'm out there talking to them answering questions and um
we even have chefs, excuse me, chefs come to our market and they do chef
demos and they tell people how to cook things because it's unbelievable
how many people don't know how to cook. And more and more people are
wanting to learn that art of cooking instead of just throwing something in
the microwave or some pre pre bought food, whatever uh and cooking from
scratch more and more people want to do that. So we've, we pay chefs to
come and, and, and there's an educational process and then I invariably
get asked questions and I always just tell them what my wife does because
she's, she's, she's as good as most of the chefs. Um As far as what, how
she cooks and the quality. So I just learned from her how to do a few
things, ask her questions all the time. And then I just um repeat that to
them and they're very appreciative of that and more and more I see them
doing their own gardening at home and planting a few things at home more
than happy to help them with that. Why is it important in today's society
to sit down at a table and have a meal? A good well cooked meal?
Um, I, I think it's, it's really important for the family
to get together at dinner time and talk and not text, uh, to not have a
cell phone around during dinner. Uh, and you see this all the time, you
can go into any restaurant today and you'll see a nice young couple that
should be communicating and they've, they're both sitting there with their
cell phones like this and they're, they'll eat and, and this and there's
there, we're losing our ability to communicate with each other through all
this wonderful technology. Technology is wonderful, but there's times to
put it down, there's times to say we're not going to do that. So, from a
family perspective, that's one time when you sit down to eat dinner or
breakfast, not so much lunch, but dinner especially, that's one time when
the family can all come together and share great food and share
conversation and communicate with each other like human beings instead of
a bunch of Androids.
So I'm just gonna ask you a little bit about um kind of the futuristic
movement that you see. Um in Phoenix, we need to stop. Do I need to move
in there for a few minutes? No, you're all right. I like five more minutes.
Ok. Um Talk a little bit about um what you see what you envision in, by
the year 2040
in, in your farm itself and in the movement itself in the organic movement
in 2040 in 2040 I won't be here. Uh Chances are very strong, I won't be
here. The odds are very high. I will not be here. Uh But my son will be
here and his family will be here and who knows where that will lead
because it's very clear that he will continue this. He loves doing what
he's doing. Um And it's very clear that this will continue. Um So I, I see
a lot more uh food being grown locally. If you look at this valley when I
first came here. Um And there was less than a million people in 1968
there's less than a million people here and not that that's a small number.
But everywhere you went, it was agriculture. This whole valley was
beautiful, wonderful ground, agriculture and we built houses all over it.
So now the only ground left pretty much is not the best ground. Um We shot
ourselves in the foot, but that ground can be rehabilitated, that ground
can be brought up to the way we're bringing up all of our ground and can
be productive again. So I see um I see continued growth of local food
producers. Um Someday there may be um a a central hub where they could
bring all of their products and they could be sold. Um And, and instead of
having we, we, we, we'll definitely have probably farmers market in every
corner that's happening now. But there still needs to be some kind of a
central hub where everything could get consolidated and then redistributed
, but it's very expensive to do that. Hopefully, someday there will be
money to do that in into uh into some kind of a more efficient
distribution system.
One more question, why is that distribution important to the farmers?
Um Because if you can consolidate, instead of having 10 farmers with, with
multiple trucks going all over, if you can consolidate that into an
already existing uh food distribution system efficiently and not lose its
identity and not lose the fact that, you know, I'm not trying to convert
it into a commercial produce, but it's, it's the efficiency of the system
is low at this point in time. Uh For instance, uh and it would take, it
would take a tremendous amount of work money and co-operation. But for
instance, uh we maybe have four or five small farmers like us that are
delivering to the same restaurants every day? Ok. So does it make sense to
have four or five trucks go to that same restaurant or does it make sense
to have one truck with products from four or five farms? Go to that
restaurant?
Any final closing thoughts? Anything I did not ask that you would like to
make mention you haven't got enough time. Ok.
And I talk a lot and, and I get, I get distracted as to where I'm going.
But, but, you know, if you, after you digest all of this, if you want.