I’ve been looking through the videos we have from this summer’s Old Salt Festival, and am struck by the caliber of speakers that joined us. Let me say again a deeply felt thank you to all of these amazing teachers for what they shared with us over Solstice weekend. You really have to listen to the very first panel we had Thursday evening, a pre-festival moment we put together for our Kinship Program participants, featuring Mary Berry and Meriwether Lewis Hardie.
In their conversation, Mary Berry opened by saying that if our society wants to live responsibly, if we aspire to regenerative agriculture, then we must accept limits. She went on to say, “the problem with our culture and our economy is that we have no limits.”
Just as a good rancher knows that a given field is limited in its capacity to feed livestock without degrading the soil’s microbial and plant communities, so the earth itself has a limited capacity to support life. The materials, space and water required for our houses, the energy we use, the sinks into which our waste streams flow… it’s all limited. So, living responsibly means limiting our wants.
Although this is not popular in a culture and economy premised on growth, it tends to be uncontroversial amongst people who know the land.
But what is the implication for doing business responsibly? If we want to price food as affordably as possible, and if it is also true that producers and workers need a larger share of the food dollar in order to bring high quality products to market, then a regenerative food business must limit the share of the pie allocated to founders, executives, and investors.
This is the primary Old Salt Co-op difference. We ask our founders, executive employees and investors to take less than is typical in order to prioritize the stakeholder groups that have been most disenfranchised by our current food system. Therefore, only those who have placed limits on their definition of personal monetary success are a fit within the Old Salt system.
For example, in S&P 500 firms, the gap between highest and lowest paid employees is currently around 285-to-1. Lower-wage companies are seeing gaps closer to 632-to-1. At Old Salt, by design, that gap will never exceed 10-to-1. In the world of finance and investing, venture firms providing capital to startups typically expect 30% IRR over 5-7 years, usually premised on the sale of the company. By contrast, if Old Salt succeeds, our investors may receive IRR in the range of 11-13% over 15 years or more. And, as I like to say, our exit strategy is a good death. This is a company built to live in, not to sell.
Most people choosing a food brand tend to focus on the claimed attributes of the product, or the quality practices involved in making it. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg as a whole needs examining: Does your chosen brand source its food through a process that adequately supports the people whose labor and skill brings it to market?
In closing, I’ll share a poem from Mary Berry’s father that she cited in her talk. It’s called, “A Vision”
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow-growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it,
if we will make our seasons welcome here,
asking not too much of earth or heaven,
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides, fields and gardens
rich in the windows. The river will run
clear, as we will never know it,
and over it, birdsong like a canopy.
On the levels of the hills will be
green meadows, stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music
risen out of the ground. They will take
nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting. Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.
Wendell Berry –
Watch more videos from the Old Salt Festival HERE
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In gratitude,
Cole
