#9 - Caryl Levine & Ken Lee @ Lotus Foods

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #9 - Caryl Levine & Ken Lee @ Lotus Foods

Episode Transcript:

Kyle Krull - 0:00:16
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators and investors to learn about the consumer brand supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined with my cohost, AC. Let's dive in.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:33
On this episode we have Caryl and Ken who are the cofounders and Co CEO's at Lotus Foods. Lotus Foods is supporting regenerative agriculture through their organic rice products. In this episode we learn about Lotus Foods Origin story, their mission to keep the biodiversity of rice alive, and how they're partnering with smallholder farmers across the globe to produce rice using the system of rice intensification. Now, I know the system of rice intensification doesn't sound super regenerative in name, but it definitely is. Carly and Ken are a wealth of knowledge in this space and we learned a ton about the rice industry and what it will take to transition that crop to regen overall.

Ken Lee - 0:01:12
Let's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:13
Go what's up everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Regen Brands Podcast. We are very excited today to have Caryl and Ken from Lotus Foods. We are going to be talking Regent, Rice and many, many other topics. So welcome. Y'all. Thanks for joining us.

Caryl Levine - 0:01:30
Thank you. Great to be here.

Ken Lee - 0:01:32
Thanks for having us.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:34
Absolutely. Kicking it off on a Monday morning. You know nothing better than talking Regent.

Caryl Levine - 0:01:38
And right.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:40
Yes, right. So for those who are not familiar with Lotus Foods, just give us kind of like a general overview of like your company, where you can be found today, what sort of products you have and things like that.

Caryl Levine - 0:01:52
So we're a specialty organic rice company that started in 1995, so over 26 years ago. So we've been around a long a long time. So we actually began with the idea of keeping the biodiversity of rice alive by partnering with smallholder farmers who were growing rice more sustainably and giving them access to a global marketplace at a fair trade price. And so it kind of morphed through the years from conventional rice to organic rice as we got educated ourselves on the dysfunction of the of the of rice farming. You know, we knew that we could actually be innovators and do something of tremendous value and so in 2005 when Cornell University the. Center for International Food and Agricultural Development at Cornell came to Lotus Foods and said, hey guys, do you know about the system of rice intensification? A much more agro ecological way to grow rice that gave farmers double and triple their yields with less inputs. Less water, less seed, no acro chemicals, less methane gas emissions. We said, Oh my goodness, and traveled to Madagascar and.

Caryl Levine - 0:02:44
Indonesia and Cambodia where these Sri farmers were coming out of deficit and farming at a deficit, so they had capacity to actually create markets and we have never looked back. So I'll let Ken continue, but you know about the brand and some of our products.

Ken Lee - 0:03:32
Well, just just a bit of context on what Caryl touched upon in terms of working with smallholder farmers, so. They really are what it sounds like. They have small plots of land and a lot of time they're they're living on the fringe. And So what she was talking about in terms of deficits, meaning they have small plots of land, so they can't grow enough rice to feed themselves. So imagine being a rice farmer, not have enough rice to feed your family. And so the empowerment of this new method of growing rice. Is what really allowed farmers to actually challenge being able to supply a company like Lotus Foods because they had enough where they could grow enough for themselves, maybe even some for the local marketplace, which further raises livelihood. And then of course aggregating. And whether it's cooperatives or any kind of entity, we're agnostic in terms of that. We're just really trying to, as Caryl mentioned before, preserve the biodiversity of rice and connect these farmers who are doing the good work.

Ken Lee - 0:04:06
To our existing distribution channel, so you can find us, you know in the beginning we were largely and still are largely a natural foods company and so you would find us in places like Whole Foods and cooperative stores around the country. But now we've expanded into even the club channel like Costco type of stores as well as what they call MULO which is the mass market stores which is mainly where people shop in America so. I think a lot of times we get caught up on the coastal kind of activity, you know with markets. But you know if we're going to really reach a wider breadth of consumers and customers really need to expand into these kind of mass market channels as well in order to actually provide consumers with healthier choices that are regenerative in nature at sequester carbon. That kind of addressed some of these major issues that were confronted with, you know, whether it's how much water we're using, what kind of CO2 emissions. I think a lot of times if you really look at the overall situation with climate, a lot of it's due to how we grow food and the dysfunction there only. So yeah.

Caryl Levine - 0:05:53
So I just want to add again to what Ken was saying. So. We became innovators in that we were the first people to bring pigmented rices to this marketplace to the US so we're talking about a black rice from China that we discovered on our first market research trip in 1993 through China. And that's where we discovered the black rice that we marketed and trademarked as forbidden rice. And it's still our most popular rice today. And then for the red rice which is the other whole grain pigmented rice, we started in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and imported this amazing red rice from Bhutan that actually cooked up like a white rice in 20 minutes and yet it was roasted. It was earthy and nutty and and just really fantastic. But now our red rice is a Jasmine rice from Thailand that is grown using some of these Sri methodologies.

Caryl Levine - 0:06:24
So we've always tried to be very innovative in in our product line. We brought in the first rice ramen, which is really one of our most popular products and that morphed into rice noodles, whether it be pad Thai rice noodle or an organic brown rice udan or soba noodle with brown rice and buckwheat.

Kyle Krull - 0:07:16
So while while we're on that topic, let's just walk through the portfolio as it stands today. How many different rice varieties are there? How many noodle varieties are there and what other sort of like line extensions or categories is Lotus Plain in right now?

Ken Lee - 0:07:28
Well, it's interesting. Caryl mentioned the pigmented varieties in that we were looking for a way to differentiate ourselves because when you look to enter a marketplace, it's quite mature regardless of what category you're in, in, in stores, right. And so that's the red rice and the black rice certainly did that. At the same time, you know, we didn't go into right away things like Jasmine and boss Monty Rice, which are of course wonderful specialty rice varieties that are aromatic. So they have that wonderful like flower floral like aroma for of Jasmine rice or like that kind of a popcorn kind of aroma of boss Monty Rice. Because a lot of people were already playing in that category. But what happened was when we were introduced to the system of rice intensification, we also all of a sudden said, oh, that's the differentiator. It's not good enough to grow rice without chemicals, you know, because that's what we started with conventional growing methods, you know, and then said, oh, let's do it organic because, you know, all the chemical usage. But then we saw that.

Ken Lee - 0:08:10
There's all these other issues that we need to get behind and so we realize it's not good enough to grow rice without chemicals somehow it needs to be doing more like organic plus if you will or now what's been coined. The term is now regenerative, but I think that's better thing than sustainable staying the same regeneration so that you know we can do all these things in terms of building soil sequester carbon and things like that and so. It's been kind of a like most journeys I guess it's a meandering pathway and so this is this is where we are at this point in time and you I think you mentioned earlier 20-50, but I think there's much more urgency around making this thing go a little faster because it is an existential crisis right that where it is before us at this time.

Caryl Levine - 0:09:28
But going back to the product, so as far as the rice is concerned, what Ken was talking about with the basmati, so most consumers don't know that most of the basmati in this country are hybrids. Basmati is not an easy rice to grow in India. It takes a lot of water, takes a lot of Labor and so. Most of the rice that was bred in India now for the the global market is not a true BOS Mahdi. So again being the innovators, we knew when we were going to bring a BOS Mahdi it was going to be a land race heirloom varietal. And so we have the mother of all Bos Mahdi's and it's just an amazing and the consumer should really just take the taste test, taste test. And actually see for themselves how incredible it is. And on top of being an heirloom land race, rice meaning land race means that it has never been changed, it just has passed down from generation to generation. Along with that now it's being grown using Sri Agro ecological methodologies. So we really feel like we have done as much as we can to bring you know regenerative rice to to the consumer.

Caryl Levine - 0:10:13
And the same with Jasmine, our Jasmine rice was the very first organic Jasmine rice that was actually grown in Texas by the Lowell family. And this is we're talking about 20 years ago, but that was, that was really great and now we are importing a homily rice, which is just one of the best rices out of Thailand, true Jasmine rice as well. We've got the red rice that I mentioned before that's now coming from Thailand. And also we have, we have something called Jade Pearl. So this is a very unique rice. So it's a short grain rice. It's kind of like a sushi rice that we infuse with bamboo leaf extract. So the bamboo leaf extract gives it really intense vanilla grassy flavor, but it also has health giving properties.

Caryl Levine - 0:11:03
It's antibacterial. It's it's all filled with that green, the the wonderful green chlorophyll. So it's really healthy as well. It's just you have to remember not to rinse this rice because you'll wash out all that beautiful chlorophyll.

Ken Lee - 0:11:47
We have a funny story. We were doing a trade show once and we said let's use that jade Pearl rice and make like sushi rolls where the outer rice is a green collar instead of white rice. And so I brought it to his sushi restaurant. Where I knew the chef and I didn't give any instructions and I didn't realize, of course I should have realized that the Japanese the technique of cooking rice first, they rinse it. Like incessantly until it runs, the water runs clear. Well, what they did was what Caryl said not to do was to rinse all that chlorophyll out. And so when we picked up the rolls, they were all white looking and I was like, did you Utah, right?

Kyle Krull - 0:12:25
Yeah.

Ken Lee - 0:12:25
Right. So, but but I also want to also thank Caryl for getting us back on track because I was explaining about products and then went off into a tangent. And so thanks for thanks for reeling me back in Caryl and then.

Caryl Levine - 0:12:36
That's what I do, right?

Ken Lee - 0:12:38
That's the thing. We do it, we do it for each other. So the other thing that one of the variety, our newest rice release is an ancient variety called Kali. Jira comes from India as well. It's also known as Govinda Bog. We've kind of titled it quick cook because this is a tiny, tiny rice. It's like the size of two or three sesame seeds. And it's wonderfully aromatic. And so it's kind of like a baby basmati ish kind of rice. But this is something that we had in the past added to our line and then we had to stop it because there was a perceived shortage of rice in Bangladesh where we were getting it. And so many years passed by. And then we were at the largest organic trade show in the world in Nuremberg, Germany. And we came across this gentleman who had it in his stall and we recognized it immediately because it's so distinctive. And it turns out he's like the forerunner in India for organic and fair trade. He even was into biodynamic and he was doing Sri, which we mark it as more crop per drop, which is this way of growing rice that uses less to produce more, less water, less seed, no chemicals, and farmers can get bigger yields.

Ken Lee - 0:13:31
Less labor for women, as well as mitigating methane emissions, which is like 20 times more noxious, greenhouse gassed and even CO2, which many people are rightly.

Caryl Levine - 0:14:08
So this, this, this quick cook rice cooks in only 10 minutes.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:12
Yes.

Caryl Levine - 0:14:12
That's yeah, that's pretty amazing and it's my language. It's our newest rice and and really really delicious. And then the one of course that we can't forget is the forbidden rice, which is the black rice. And then from from the forbidden rice, I mean, so imagine back in 1993 when we took this market research trip through China, we were in the southwestern most part of China called Sichuan Bana and there's 26 different minority villages and we were staying in a die minority village. And sat down to steaming bowls of black rice. So here you're in the middle of China or not in the middle of China. You're in the southwest corner of China. Yeah. And you're eating black rice, which, you know, Ken grew up in a Chinese household, and you only ate white rice. And it had this roasted, nutty flavor with almost a hint of fruit or floral at the finish. It was just absolutely delicious.

Caryl Levine - 0:14:42
And so exotic looking. So we kept on going to markets which was our favorite thing to do anyway. And asking people tell us about hey me, hey me means black rice, me is rice, hey is black. And everybody told us the same folktale that this was because of its nutritional and medicinal value. It was exclusively reserved for the emperor's to to. To ensure their good health and long life. And we actually, and that's why we named it forbidden Rice, the Emperor's exclusive grain. When we're walking around the Forbidden City, you know, two months later and Ken says, I have a great idea, which was a brilliant idea, but we actually got to meet the King of Black Foods. So black foods like blueberries and I say ye and other other black foods.

Caryl Levine - 0:15:28
In Chinese medicinal medicine, they say it's a blood tone of fire. It aids in the circulation of the blood. It's high in chi. It invigorates the spleen. It brightens the eyes. So it's just this superfood. Wait.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:08
For all that Caryl.

Caryl Levine - 0:16:09
Tastes great too, but it also has to taste great.

Ken Lee - 0:16:13
Yeah. So if you had like iron pour blood or maybe you lost blood in an accident or menstrual cycle or things like that, you could eat this kind of food to restore the balance in the blood. And it's kind of like, I think it's the thing in a lot of ancient cultures is they know the the function of food. It's not just like, what does it taste like?

Kyle Krull - 0:16:35
Yeah.

Ken Lee - 0:16:35
Yeah. So it's very interesting that way.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:37
Couple, couple comments that come to mind and then one question and well there's so much there to unpack. So we'll dive into a couple of those things in in more depth. One, you know, being a foodie, you know myself like I still just think of brown rice and white rice, so it's just crazy that that that's the culture that we have today so. We can talk more about that later as well. And then the other the other comment is rice intensification. We might have to rebrand that because that sounds a little conventional industrial agriculture to me and I think you guys are working on that for your for your internal stuff. So I love that but. I want to own in on this trip to China, right? You're calling it market research. Was it like a trip that you're now, you know, retro, actively called market research? Did you really want to start a rice company and then just give us the whole arc of why'd you go? You kind of told us what happened and how it was the inspiration behind Lotus.

Caryl Levine - 0:17:27
We wanted to start a company. We had no idea it was going to be rice. We knew after Tiananmen Square, after Tiananmen Square, rice. I mean, China was opening up. It was changing. We knew it was going to be an economic force. And so we decided to, you know, the first idea was to maybe just go around the world looking for opportunities. But that was just, yeah, but it was a mattress, but, but it was so daunting. And here, Ken, coming from, you know, a Chinese American family and with what was going on in China, we thought of having a focus would be so much better and it was. So we planned this.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:08
The small geographical area.

Caryl Levine - 0:18:10
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And we came home with 90 ideas and we still have the piece of paper that lists all these 90 ideas. And but it was where very early on in the trip where we found the black rice and where we kept on coming across it and marketplaces and talking to more people. And we shipped home a couple of kilos of it and as soon as we got back we said, OK, it's going to be rice.

Ken Lee - 0:18:37
Well, where we got back to was the Bay Area in California. So we had Caryl and I met in Connecticut and we had this great idea to start a Pacific Rim business. But then the idea hit us that well maybe we should move to the Pacific Rim. So hard to start a Pacific Rim business in Connecticut now it seems natural with with everyone working remotely, but back then there was a little bit strange so. So when Caryl says, when we got back and we assessed these 90 ideas, you know, living in arguably one of our country's food meccas, you know, San Francisco Bay area, it seemed like a natural that, you know, and so much innovation, right, comes from the West or from California. And we thought this would be something that. You know, would be difficult, yes. This is, this would differentiate ourselves like who else has black rice and red rice? Not many people, but then nobody knows what these things are. So that was the challenge, right? How do we educate folks to kind of build up the demand so that we could actually become a viable company. So that was a big challenge, but it was.

Caryl Levine - 0:19:49
Also great. So the way we did it, the way we did it, is we sent it to the top San Francisco chefs. Yes, they all loved it because what Chef wouldn't want a new palette for for the center of their plate. So we really feel.

Kyle Krull - 0:20:05
So beautiful, so visually appealing. It's such a stark difference from the general take, like if you mentioned earlier, just spider Brown. So yeah, I could see those top chefs getting really excited.

Ken Lee - 0:20:14
But the the thing what? Because I would approach these chefs and they would look at the samples and it was that they could picture that big white plate that they serve at the restaurant. And I said, this will look stunning. But Ken, if this looks great but doesn't taste good, you've made one sale and and then you're done. So luckily it was also very tasty. And I think this at the time, you know, natural foods, everything was all about nutrition, specialty food was all about taste great. And I think the public was hungering for something that tastes great and good for you, so nutritious and delicious. And I think this is the kind of thing that we stepped into in terms of the market was ready. And then later when we became a noodle company, you know, we started innovating with added value products. Caryl mentioned all these other kinds of noodles that we've introduced this really.

Ken Lee - 0:20:46
Being in the noodles kind of like it made it even more accessible to many more people and so.

Caryl Levine - 0:21:20
Well, because what Ken is trying to say also is ramen is everybody's beloved. Whether you're a kid or your college student, everybody remembers and they still have, you know, the dollar or two dollars ramen cake that you can eat on a limited budget, but all ramen at the time was made from wheat. And there's a tremendous gluten sensitivity in this country and worldwide. And so being able to make a rice ramen that looked like a wheat ramen but also tasted great, that had great texture. All of a sudden it was just explosive. How the ramen took off because not only were we making a ramen that gluten intolerant people could eat, we were making a black rice ramen. We were making a Millet and brown rice ramen, so you had more protein. We weren't even making a white rice ramen. So we were again innovating. We made a jade Pearl ramen with the bamboo extract as well. So again, you know, continuing that line of innovation.

Kyle Krull - 0:22:27
So I just want to say that I'm fasting right now. And man, this conversation like I am so hungry it's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:35
Incredible, yeah.

Kyle Krull - 0:22:37
I do want to dive in a little bit and talk about, you mentioned the one crop per drop. We mentioned Sri as briefly as you can, you know as simple as possible I'm sure because you can probably get really into the weeds on this stuff, but like talk about conventional rice production versus the one crop for sorry one drop.

Ken Lee - 0:22:57
Yeah, more crop per drop. Yeah, more crop per drop. And I just wanted to get back to because Anthony brought up the point about the name and and Caryl doesn't like the name either, the system of rice intensification. But really the reason it's a great name is because go back to the premise, we introduced smallholder farmers, Smallholds, holdings of land. How can we improve yields so that they have enough food and maybe can sell some of the marketplace or just. Grow less rice and grow other vegetables which adds to their own diets or they can sell those in the marketplace and further raise livelihood. So the idea of a system of rice intensification is that farmers can use it's it becomes a less is more paradigm and that's where the intensification comes in, is making the best use of the little bit of land that they have, which is so important because. That's another problem with small older farmers who over the years, you know, they keep dividing that land amongst family members and it just keeps getting smaller. And so we really need to have a way for farmers to improve their yields and have some way to actually progress beyond what they've been doing. It's interesting when you look at photos of farmers, if there were photos hundreds of years ago, it'd be the same as what they look like now. So despite all these attempts by aid agencies to improve yield, all they're doing is bringing synthetic chemicals, fertilizers, inputs like that or special seeds that are proprietary to big companies that you have to keep buying and they have to use chemicals to grow them. And it's like it's it's a problem because it's putting farmers in debt as opposed to helping them and so.

Ken Lee - 0:24:19
My rent is about, you know, really helping farmers to actually improve livelihood and and they actually, you know, people may think that like it's big Ag that produces all the food, but no, it's small holders that produce most of the food on the planet. And more people derive their livelihood from growing rice than anything else that human beings do on planet Earth. And so.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:07
Say that again. Can't say that again.

Ken Lee - 0:25:09
Yeah, that the thing that people are most doing for work is related to rice and when you think about it the the sheer amount of water, you know when we when we introduce a phrase like more crop per drop, it's it's it's very well thought out because. Rice uses more water than the number 2 and #3 crops combined, so 1/4 to 1/3 of Earth's freshwater reserves is used to grow the rice crop every year on planet Earth. Could we use that water for other things, like drinking or bathing or just letting it go back into the ground? So that recharges aquifers, which are sensitive ecosystems, right? So, you know, you're right. This conversation actually spills out over and over into many, many benefits that accrue to people.

Kyle Krull - 0:26:02
I want to touch on one thing real quick. I I looked up, I looked up some stats right before this call and I think it's as of a 2020 study that I saw in Statista, it's 164,000,000 hectares of land is used globally to grow rice and to put that in perspective with 164 million the. The United States is 174,000,000, so almost the same amount of land is the entire United States of America is used to grow rice. So to your point, if we are starting to implement these methods that use 50% less water on that much land like the potential positive ecological outcomes are just. Yeah.

Ken Lee - 0:26:43
Extraordinary and so.

Caryl Levine - 0:26:46
Exactly what we're doing.

Ken Lee - 0:26:48
I'm sure we're going to get into what is Sri, but.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:51
Get into it right now. Can't jump in.

Ken Lee - 0:26:53
So traditionally farmers who grow rice in flooded rice fields and so this is, this is I think when we look at how things have been done for a millennia, we think that there's certain wisdom contained where. But Rice is not an aquatic plant. It doesn't need to be flooded in in fields. The reason they do it is I think sometimes they just can't control it. It's just falling out of the sky, you know, there's monsoon seasons, there's all kinds of things like that. But the one real good benefit of flooded rice fields is. It acts to prevent weeds from competing with the rice. So what happens is they have a nurse, have a nursery and then they transplant those seeds into the production field. The field is flooded.

Ken Lee - 0:27:28
So this, the seedlings are, you know, 354045 days old. They may be like this tall, like it looks like a real big, like green onion scallion that you'd buy in a supermarket. Yeah. And they take four or five, six of them, and they bunch them together, one big clump, and they put it into a hill and they take another clump and they put it. So it's very densely populated throughout the field this.

Caryl Levine - 0:28:03
Is this is just just to clarify he is explaining conventional rice farming right not more crops or drop yeah so so kit so OK.

Ken Lee - 0:28:13
So by having it planted like that, it looks very solid and like we're gonna have a lot of food. But if anybody listening to this, what I'm saying now is a gardener, you know, you don't crowd your seedlings, you thin them out, right? Why? So there's no less competition for for nutrients, that type of thing, more photosynthesis. And So what they do in Sri is they take a single seedling that's very young, 8 to 15 days old. It's just like young children have more ability to like learn multiple languages all at once, right? And so the young seedlings have an ability to sprout out more of the tillers and panicles, the the trunk and the arms of the plant, which have more rice on them. And so they take a single seedling.

Ken Lee - 0:28:28
One seedling, not 4-5 or six planted by itself. Space it out maybe twelve 1520 inches. Depends on the variety, depends on the climate. Farmers need to experiment. And then you grow them in rows. Why? So that if you're not having fluttered fields, those weeds will try to compete with the rice. So by having them in rows they take this little looks like a push hand mower. It's got handlebars and person is standing upright, which is big because.

Ken Lee - 0:28:56
If you look at how rice farming is done, it's backbreaking bent over work. And the net effect of that as you see, like in villages, elderly women who can't stand up straight anymore, they've been hunched over, so anyways, they got them in rows. They can do upright work, weed, weed. The weeds back in the ground forms more biomass for the plant to eat. But more importantly, provides oxygen flow into the soil which provides more growth for more promotion of soil biota. So healthier soil by having, by having the by not having the the water table right there in a flooded field. The roots of the plants need to dive down deeper into the soil to access more like micronutrients.

Ken Lee - 0:29:47
And also it forms a larger root ball so that you know after ninety 120, a 150, however many days it takes, you know, because it's photosynthetic derived, when the winds blow, like the monsoon winds will come towards the harvest. If this, if the foundation of the plant is not deep, it'll knock over and that's called lodging and the lodging. Actually you could lose most of your harvest. So this is a really commonsensical thing. It's the single seedling planted in rows with plenty of spacing. So you can do the weeding, and then as long as there's water coming on and off, then then it conforms to this way to mitigate methane. Now, the difficult part in why some farmers don't trust this is because they don't have irrigation fields. Sometimes they don't control water. They only rely on what falls out of the sky. And if they let it run off, when's the next water coming?

Ken Lee - 0:30:37
We don't know. So, so then, but there's solutions to this. As you know, more people can fund these things that can be rainwater catchment systems.

Caryl Levine - 0:31:16
It could be, it could be.

Ken Lee - 0:31:18
Use of ponds, we have aquaculture and you bring the water on as you need it and bring it back off. So that's a kind of a snapshot. In terms of Sri in them the most powerful thing is seeing is believing. If you, if you look at where farmers have because they're skeptical right when you're here or you want me to do this, it's like. But when you, when they see what happens when they get more yield with less, then they start to believe and then it's like farmer to farmer kind of persuasion. They tell each other and this is what we're really trying to do as a company is create this kind of momentum so that farmers become empowered and they can actually take control of their lives. And what's happened is women gain a prestige position in the community because they've innovated. Now they've going on to more entrepreneurial things or they, you know, they're just becoming leaders. And and so this is a great thing whether you're looking at it through a Jedi lens like, you know, equity, you know, that people can participate equally. So that again, there's many, many positive benefits to the work. But it's so young yet, and so that's why I really appreciate having the opportunity to talk about it. Hopefully we're being clear about what we're talking.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:31
Yeah, I mean absolutely all the region growing terminology and practices conversations are so different based off geography, based off crops. So we've we've always really enjoyed and it is nuanced. It's hard to, it's hard to encapsulate in just a 10 minute segment of like the 60 Minute Podcast, right. But it's it's making sense to me and you talk about economics, you talk about the Jedi topics talk a little bit, you talked about the water, right, but carbon sequestration and soil health, I mean we can kind of deduce some things from that but. What? Let's just talk about regenerative, right. So when did that word like come on y'all's radar and specifically with Sri, like what really makes it regenerative, so other than no chemicals, but maybe highlight a couple of those pieces and tell us like the the region specific journey part of it?

Caryl Levine - 0:33:16
So about four years ago when Rodale Press and Rodale and Dr. Brannan's and Patagonia decided that we had to go beyond organic and they were creating the standards with the with. You know, the generative organic alliance, they invited Lotus Foods to be a pilot in the pilot program that was about started off a little bit more than 20, I think only 17 when actually through the program. And at the time you know we were a little bit skeptical only because who needed another bug on their on their retail package and you know we already went through the fiasco of the of the non-GMO verification project and so you know that was a little bit that took us a little you know that was concerning to us but yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:10
We'll not do it.

Caryl Levine - 0:34:11
But then, well, I think for us. The two main reasons why we thought we definitely needed to do this is we needed to be the voice of the smallholder farmer, the global smallholder farmer because what happens in India and Cambodia and Indonesia is very, very different from small holders in the US. So that was one of the primary reasons because $100 soil test might not seem like a lot of money here in the US, but it's a tremendous amount of of money, you know, in these developing countries. And then also we wanted to use this as an opportunity to really show the consumer and and the retailer and the distributors that Sri more Cropper drop was indeed regenerative you know from the get go which it is and it was. So having this third party certification gave us that that. That kind of assurance that we needed as well. So we're delighted that we did it and we will continue to you know to certify these because it's it's so important and we believe in it so much. I think the one thing with you know with with with regenerative and and the soils you know the more of the one thing Ken didn't say with the also Sri you can actually.

Caryl Levine - 0:35:02
It doesn't have to be organic. Sri is happening in over 60 countries with millions of farmers, but Lotus foods and what we do with our particular farmers is strictly organic. So there's no, there's no chemicals or pesticides or herbicides. And so all the organic matter that's going back into the soil is you know, is so important and that's part of the whole regenerative movement as well as creating better soils because what you put into the soil is actually what you're going to put into that rice kernel. And so the more micro, micro nutrients that are in this soil, the healthier that rice. Grain is going to be as well, so we're really excited to be a part of this movement.

Ken Lee - 0:36:17
That's also Caryl mentioned, no she just mentioned that you know we our Sri is organic but the way it's taught is is quite agnostic and doesn't allows farmers if they've got some circumstance with pest or something like that they can add some. Some pesticides, so.

Caryl Levine - 0:36:38
But not for our brand this is.

Ken Lee - 0:36:39
Not for our brand, just for our brand, the way it's taught and it's not a, it's not a technology. So this is not owned by anyone. This is totally open source and it's really the way it's taught is very respectful. It's it's understanding that the farmer knows a lot about their land. And then that they should be brought along that way in a very respectful way. And so it's not like we're coming to save you. It's just like here's something that that works and and and farmers are skeptical because you know you're asking them to put everything on the line you know in terms of. Feeding their family, right. And So what really works is all those ad age ag development agencies that are out there like Oxfam or Africa or Catholic Relief Services or World Wildlife Fund. There's many organizations out there. And what they do brilliantly is they have built relationships, they have test plots, they invite the farmers to their test plot to see what they're doing and they could see step by step what they're doing that's different.

Ken Lee - 0:37:13
And then they can see over a month or two months or three months how things are improving. And then it's like, oh, it's not so risky. And then maybe they'll try a portion of their land, they'll do a test, not all of it, and prove it to themselves. And that's, that's where I meant early when I was talking about Farmer to farmer. And and I think this is really what has empowered so many farmers and why it's in 60 nations right now. It's because of the empowerment factor that they've actually seen the results.

Ken Lee - 0:37:42
And they want to continue that way and if we can do this, we can kind of flip the switch in terms of you know how when I mentioned before how much water is used or all those flooded fields, they account for about 15% of man made methane emissions. So if we can, we can, if we can bring on this change by voting with our wallets, by asking how is food produced, you know, knowing your farm, all these things.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:38:36
Ken, why does a flooded rice field produce methane for those that don't know?

Ken Lee - 0:38:40
So the flooded rice field, it's anaerobic, meaning nothing can breathe, soil can't breathe, the root systems can't breathe. It creates the conditions for, for, for, for methane emissions. Yeah. So basically there's a there's a lot of rotting, just like in landfills with all the wasted food. Like, I'm sure all your listeners kind of know that about 40% of all food is wasted. And so there's another area where we can do better in terms of not creating all this greenhouse gases. So yeah, it's certain microbes that are formed in those circumstances that are methane producing and of course methane. Methane is a short lived greenhouse gas and what does it turn into CO2 for another 100 years. So yeah, we got a lot of work to do, but I think if people knew that they could actually do something. And I think that that's the other question. People need to ask some questions so that because there's many entry points to get involved and it doesn't have to be a rice solution, there's many, many ways in which we can be part of this global movement to kind of make things better for, you know, future generations.

Caryl Levine - 0:39:53
So, so just to summarize and make it really simple, this methodology 90% less seeds, 25 to 50% less water. 40% less methane emissions when fields are not continuously flooded, that's that's actually and this is and just by following those six different methods. Younger seedlings, more spacing water on and off weeding intermittently and rose planting and rose watering on and off like you would a vegetable garden and you get. Double or triple the yields with less. Less seeds, less water, less methane.

Kyle Krull - 0:40:34
It's incredible and it's super empowering when you lay it out in those really simple bullet point terms as far as like what sort of an impact that can make for the farmer, like, they're buying less, they're using less, they're getting more. Like they get to, like you mentioned, get out of the deficit. That's incredibly powerful. I'm curious, so you we touched a little bit on certifications and the number, well what I assume is like a vast number of small farmers that you all support?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:57
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 0:40:58
And I'm just thinking that probably creates a bit of a throws a wrench into the certification system because there's that many people that have to get certified. So tell us a little bit about what that looks like and I believe there's two rock certified skews in the lowest portfolio right now and are there more coming like what is that?

Caryl Levine - 0:41:14
Gonna look like. There too. Right now, the white and the brown basmati rice that's grown in Uttar Pradesh. And there is about how many? You know, actually it's it's how many farmers can.

Ken Lee - 0:41:30
There's about a few 100 but then also the farmers who are farming, the quick cook, the Kali, Jira, rice, that's about another 365 farmers. So these are small numbers right. So just to give people a sense you know it's it's we're. It's really nascent kind of a movement, but if a farmer sees that that's that's really the next one I want to bring up is you know we're talking about certification to bring validity to some of the things because there's auditors that go out to the field. But what I would really hope can happen is when we talk about like less methane if we could have on field monitoring whether it's through handheld device. Whether it's through drones, whether it's satellite imagery, I don't care what it is. If we can validate it so that we can prove that these farmers are doing the good work right now, there's like this whole movement of carbon credits that's basically paying for your pollution, right? Why don't we reward those farmers doing the good work and in an insetting methodology? And then reward them for what they're doing. And if we can monetize it by monitoring and validating what good they're doing, like how much water is saved, how much labor is saved, you know, because let's face it, when we talk about how much labor is saved, we're talking about people who work in the field outside in extreme weather conditions. And so the great thing that we've heard these stories from farmers is.

Ken Lee - 0:42:37
I don't have to work in the midday sun. I can go out early in the morning and later in the afternoon and then do other things like child rearing or fetching water or all the things that farmers have to do. So, you know, if we can actually create some kind of a monetization or reward system for farmers, guess what, next door neighbor of them, that farmer is going to want to do the same thing and their neighbor and that'll really ramp up the adaptation of this method. Because let's face it, farmers are no different than you and me and everyone else listening. They want to take care of their food, clothing and shelter needs for their family so that their kids can have a better life. It's it's the same. It's a universal thing. So we can bring that kind of a kind of forced to bear. I think that that'll get us on on the way. And I think people wield that kind of power if they realize it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:59
When you. Yeah, when you say that, I think to y'all mentioning Cornell earlier and right, so like when we talk about Sri, we talked about Cornell, we've talked about NGO's and nonprofits in these geographies. We talked about private, you know, market actors that create markets like Lotus Foods and there's probably others. And so this whole thing, I continue to be, you know, very bullish on the future or very excited about even though it is small now, we have a lot of bridges being built across these different organizations that we have to continue to do that to produce. What's Sri? You know volume to or what's Sr. Sri plus the in setting that you're talking about, Ken or whatever I don't think of. Cornell is like the rice Mecca, so I'm curious how how that came out of Cornell, but maybe that's a topic for another day. But my curiosity is making me ask.

Ken Lee - 0:44:43
Well, it's interesting, right? Because the person that introduced it to us is more of a social scientist and not from the ag side. No, Cornell is a great ag school. But I would say Cornell is not a monolithic entity, right? They don't all think this way. And I think if you look at the funding that goes to a lot of these research institutions, a lot of times, I mean the five, I think the five largest food companies are five chemical companies. So I'm not going to say anything disparaging about Cornell, but this, it's not like everybody there believes in this either because you know a lot of the researchers in a different direction. This is something that again, it's, it's open source, nobody owns this. Nobody gonna make any money on it. I mean, we we market it as something that's worthwhile but and so, but, but you know, we're doing it for a different, different reason. We don't.

Caryl Levine - 0:45:34
But Dr. Norm, Dr. Norman up off was the real person at Cornell behind Sri and he traveled the world you you know with these small holder farmers and really helping to to make this more accessible and again through the NGO. World through, through Oxfam, through World Wildlife Fund. And you know what I love about all this is it's a true public sector, private sector partnership. It really is. And the collaboration we nobody could, it's it's really the sum of the parts that really make it holistic. And you know Rice is such an important crop and in any village, rice is, is part of village life. From the planting to the harvesting to the cooking and eating. So it's not 1 entity, it really does. It's incredibly holistic and and that's the part that we would like about it as well.

Ken Lee - 0:46:36
And and Dr. Norman up off he himself just like farmers when they hear this is skeptical and so that's why he went out to kind of have conversations and and found out that this is actually something that's going on and the and the other skepticism was you know was a Jesuit agronimus priest in the. 80s that went to Madagascar to kind of help farmers to alleviate poverty, to have bigger yields. And through observation in the field he saw that where the water broke away from the rice field the the plants were actually doing better that weren't underwater. So he's.

Kyle Krull - 0:47:11
Kind.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:12
Of.

Ken Lee - 0:47:12
Yeah, so he was ripping on that and came up with this new way to grow rice. And that was in the 80s and it really wasn't until the turn of the century. That this gut kind of traction. So what does that mean? That speaks to, I think, our unwillingness to change so fast, right? Somehow we need to get. It takes time, right? Just like like anything, it takes a bit of time for people to grasp and then adopt.

Kyle Krull - 0:47:39
Right. Well, we talked about time, you know, I think you mentioned you've been in business for 23 years now.

Caryl Levine - 0:47:44
27 years.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:46
27 years.

Kyle Krull - 0:47:47
Ago that's it's extraordinary. So kudos to you for all the work you've done in the the rice industry and bringing products to market and sharing this story with consumers to try to you know get more adoption towards these practices to scale more acreage. I'm curious, so like the future of Lotus, it's been 27 years. Like what is the next 5 to 10 years look like? What are you trying to achieve is it? New product innovations, is it new category penetration, is it about, you know, amount of acres you're transitioning to this new system? Yeah.

Caryl Levine - 0:48:20
OK, yeah, yeah. No, I think, I think our whole mission is to if if we have an audacious goal to change how rice has grown around the world, then we have a great foundation in these 26 plus years. But we have such a long way to go. And so, you know, one of our newest project is we're working with Jubilee justice here in the US for our 25th anniversary. We said we've got to do Sri in the US and so now condom, Mason and Jubilee Justice is working with black farmers in Louisiana and Mississippi and South Carolina and Georgia and and they're using Sri and they're totally loving it and seeing the benefits of it. And so right now, they're experimenting with about 21 different varietals. And this is like their third year of experimentation. So there might be enough this year, but maybe by next year they'll really be enough to really start marketing. But we're totally excited about that.

Ken Lee - 0:49:27
Yeah. So our role is a market connector. So just, you know, a lot of times people think this Sri is something we thought up, but it's not. It's just that something that we think needs to be done. And so we support it. And sometimes, you know, we'll support farmers for their organic certification costs, but sometimes, you know, they may need some seed purification or maybe they're looking for some type of way to create their own compost or you know, green manure and stuff like that. So we try to help in that regard in the future. You know, we would love to build capacity on the ground and and help farmers to actually own the means of production. So that means like for example if they don't need to go to an privately owned mill and have their stuff milled because when you do that you don't get the byproducts, but the byproducts can be used on farm, could be to feed animals, could be to make you know. Mattresses or something like that or you can make what is that called, Caryl, when you burn the stuff, biochar. Biochar, to create more augmentation into the field, kind of give back to the soil, you know, this is all these things that farmers can do if they had more. And so that's, that's I think that's where the future is too. How do we embed within those communities more of the means of production so that they can prosper, you know?

Ken Lee - 0:50:25
Like if we want to sell rice that's completely packaged and we don't have to clean it in the US and package it. And if they could do it and meet our quality specifications then that that gives them even more income. So it's, you know, we need to promote more win win scenarios for the farmers themselves because they're the ones are really doing the good work.

Caryl Levine - 0:51:16
We really believe that we can lead the way. In rice farming practices, in that also with these rice farming practices like regenerative, we can actually simultaneously not only mitigate climate, you know, change, but we can promote farmers resilience, we can empower women and we can give consumers alternative healthier choices as well. So you know.

Kyle Krull - 0:51:41
We're going to be so exciting. You know.

Caryl Levine - 0:51:44
Well, you know when you when you think of.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:51:46
Reason it's been around forever, yeah.

Caryl Levine - 0:51:47
When you think about it, you can eat rice for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and dessert. So you could have rice every day, all day. And and, you know, and rice also happens to be incredibly digestible. So it's not something like wheat that sits heavy in your in your belly. It really is incredibly, you know, digestible.

Ken Lee - 0:52:11
Which leads us to rice Rice's life, which is, yeah, our new cookbook coming out in October.

Caryl Levine - 0:52:18
So we have, we have a new cookbook called Rice's Life and it is coming out in October. And the beautiful part of this cookbook is not that not it has 65 incredible global recipes from around the world, but it really gets to talk, tell our story. So it tells our Founders story and it tells the more crop or drop story.

Kyle Krull - 0:52:39
That's really cool. I'll sign up for an early part. Absolutely. Also, I make a ton of Lotus rice with kettle and fire makes, regenerative chicken broth chicken.

Caryl Levine - 0:52:49
Broth.

Kyle Krull - 0:52:50
And so I make that and just like a nutrient powerhouse, and I love it. It's so satiating and he's just making incredible stuff. So it's I'm excited for the book, I'm excited for the new products. It's going to be really cool.

Caryl Levine - 0:53:03
Thank you.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:53:03
I'm I'm pumped that you guys are working with Jubilee Justice. They're an amazing organization, my man Mark Watson and pot liquor capital and it works very tight with them. They're an amazing organization. Well, we'll link their work below. They're just doing doing awesome stuff. So we'll let both of y'all answer our our final question, which is really kind of our challenge to to the space and the world at large. And the question is how do we get regen brand staff 50% market share by 2050?

Caryl Levine - 0:53:33
For me, again, it takes these partnerships, it takes everybody getting behind it. You know the distributor, the retailer, the consumer, the brands. It, we can't do it alone. We all have to really pull. I mean everybody has a role to play and if everybody plays the role and we can, we can do it and we have to do it. So I'm really excited to get everybody on board so that we can actually really have. This impact that we all want and see and that we need.

Ken Lee - 0:54:04
Yeah. And I think kind of creating a dialogue where people can actually be heard kind of I hopefully this what we're doing now is a step because I think you can hit people over the head with a doom and gloom story. But I don't think that's really catching any momentum to making positive change. But I think if people understood the good stories that are out there. That they feel like they could be part of that. Who, who wouldn't want to, like, help save the planet? Now, even even from a standpoint of like big companies, like Big CPG food companies, this is not a kind of a strange ask. This is not like a tree hugger issue. What we're talking about. This is like supply.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:52
Change supply change.

Ken Lee - 0:54:53
Supply change, stability, you know, and.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:55
Resiliency.

Ken Lee - 0:54:56
I mean. If we just, if the planet just incinerates or soil topsoil is is obliterated, then, you know, I don't think we're going to grow up enough food for the planet on rooftops or in, you know, you know, what is that?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:12
We can't live off spring mix and tomatoes. I sold millions of dollars worth of spring mix and tomatoes, but we can't live off it. I'm sorry.

Ken Lee - 0:55:19
Yeah. So I think, you know, just coming together and and having the honest conversation and. And feeling like this power within within our own, you know, within our own beings and that we somehow can tap into that. So everybody's into like superpower movies and stuff like, but we all have that capacity. And once we realize it, that's how we can do it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:44
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 0:55:45
Awesome. I love that it's been you both have had an incredible energy and optimism and enthusiasm in our conversation today, and it's been really cool and fun to be a part of this. And really appreciate you 2 taking the time to, you know, sit down and chat region with us a couple of strangers on this call.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:01
Learned so much, I learned so much.

Kyle Krull - 0:56:04
Wow, this conversation.

Caryl Levine - 0:56:05
Yeah, we too. We did too. We love talking about it because rice is life.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:12
Yep, Yep. Where where can folks find more information on y'all?

Caryl Levine - 0:56:17
I'd go into our new website lotusfoods.com and yeah and just have fun with it and.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:26
Cool. Well, Congrats on everything. We're looking forward to the next conversation. Not in 27 years we'll have one.

Caryl Levine - 0:56:32
As well but.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:33
Maybe in a year or two, but we'll definitely be having them still in 27 years. So Congrats on everything y'all.

Caryl Levine - 0:56:37
Thanks. Thanks. That would be great.

Ken Lee - 0:56:40
Thanks so much for having us.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:56:46
For show notes and more information on our guests and what we discussed on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com that is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes. Thanks so much for tuning into the Region Brands Podcast, brought to you by The Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more legitimate food system. Love you guys.